Apologetics – Page 5 – Anthony G. Flood

Did the Apostle Paul argue for God’s existence?

Theistic philosopher Bill Vallicella recently posted again on Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans (1:18-20). Here are the concluding sentences:

It ought to be obvious that one cannot straightaway infer from the intelligibility, order, beauty, and existence of nature that ‘behind’ nature there is a supernatural personal being that is supremely intelligent, the source of all beauty, and the first cause of all existing things apart from itself. One cannot ‘read off’ the being instantiated of the divine attributes from contemplation of nature.

Suppose I see a woman. I am certain that if she is a wife, then there is a person who is her husband. Can I correctly infer from those two propositions that the woman I see is a wife? Can I ‘read off’ from my perception of the woman that she is a wife?”

No, we can’t read off “wife” (a relationship) from her body, but the prior question should be: can we can “read off” her being a woman from . . . what exactly? From nothing: we don’t infer “woman” (female person) from a congeries of sensory phenomena, but rather intuit “woman” immediately.

And we’re responsible for treating her with the respect due every person, and not treat her as though she were an insentient android (on the off chance that the “inference” to personhood is an inductive leap to a falsehood).

We don’t infer God from the world’s existence, organization and beauty, but that’s irrelevant to Paul’s claim. That is, Bill’s report of what’s obvious to him is not germane to Paul’s claim to have revealed something about our epistemological situation.

What is known (gnoston) of God (Roman 1:19) is understood (noumena) by the things that are made (Romans 1:20). It is not that the latter provide materials for an inference to God, but rather that they occasion the occurrence of insight (as Augustus Strong put it).

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“Life from non-life”? Without a prayer.

Abiogenesis, a Greek mouthful for “the origin of life,” is according to Wikipedia, “the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter.”

The lack of critical qualification at the outset is startling: non-living matter’s alleged once-upon-a-time issuance in life is asserted as a fact, not a hypothesis. That is, the bald assertion comes first, followed by the admission of the hypothetical nature of the whole business:

While the details of this process are still unknown, the prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity that involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Although the occurrence of abiogenesis is uncontroversial among scientists, there is no single, generally accepted model for the origin of life, and this article presents several principles and hypotheses for how abiogenesis could have occurred.

So the devilish details are unknown and there’s no single, generally accepted model for abiogenesis, yet some version of it must be true. That’s the “prevailing hypothesis.” Belief in its having occurred is “uncontroversial among scientists.”

That is to say, abiogenesis is a dogma, not an empirically verified fact. It is a sad commentary on the state of science that a theory with nothing going for it except the culturally regnant naturalistic prejudice is “uncontroversial.”

And by nothing, I mean . . . nothing. For an entertaining retailing of the dues the dogmatists pay for their dogmatism, I cannot recommend too enthusiastically Rice University Professor of Chemistry James Tour‘s lively video presentation (sponsored by The Discovery Institute) available on EvolutionNews.

Professor Tour’s massive case against “life from non-life” gives one an idea of the “integrated chemical complexity” that led the late philosopher (and long-time atheist) Antony Flew (not to be confused with Anthony Flood) to drop his profession of atheism for deism.

“Show me the chemistry!,” Tour demands. So did Flew, but he went away empty-handed.

It doesn’t exist.

The evidence for the existence of God—the God of the Bible, not Flew’s deistic deus—lies in (among many other aspects of creation) scientific inquiry itself, the fit of intelligibility and intelligence. It’s inexplicable apart from the worldview expressed in the Bible. The demonstrated folly of research programs for testing the abiogenesis “hypothesis”—or the dogma masquerading as one—is, at best, a suasive consideration for Christian theism.

So, again, set aside a couple of minutes for the beginning of James Tour’s pedagogical tour de force (sorry!). I defy you not to stay for the whole hour.

Two Passovers? What a difference a calendar makes.

When Jesus was brought before Pilate, “it was the day of the Preparation of the Passover” (John 19:14; emphasis added). Passover lay in the near future. And yet Jesus told his disciples, “With desire I have desired to eat this the Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15; emphasis added). What is commonly called “The Last Supper” was the Passover.

If, however, the arguments of Colin J. Humphreys’s The Mystery of the The Last Supper hold up, there is no discrepancy. We may believe Jesus did celebrate the Passover on Nisan 14, not according to the calendar devised during the Babylonian Exile, however, but according to the pre-exilic calendar of ancient Israel. Those calendars were as different from each other as, say, the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar differs from the equally serviceable calendar of the Eastern Orthodox.

The pre-exilic calendar, being 364 days in length, is evenly divisible by 7. In such a calendar, therefore, any given date falls on the same day every year. Therefore, that calendar’s Nisan 14 has always fallen on a Wednesday since the first Passover. Humphreys’s hypothesis, to which I cannot do justice here, dissolves apparent discrepancies that have challenged faithful readers of the Gospels. Image result for The Mystery of the Last Supper: Reconstructing the Final Days of Jesus

For example, even though Jesus was arrested after eating His Passover, John’s Gospel has servants of the high priest Caiaphas conducting Jesus to Pilate’s hall of judgment before the “official” Passover: “and they themselves went not in the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover” (John 18:28b).

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Do atheists have an excuse?

In a short post few months ago, Bill Vallicella argued that “If God exists, and one is an atheist, then one is ignorant of God, but it does not follow that one is culpably ignorant.” (Italics added.)

Bill takes his definition of “culpable ignorance” from a Catholic dictionary: ignorance is blameworthy if the ignorant one could have “cleared up” his ignorance, but chose not to. “One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant,” the dictionary says, “if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known.”

Bill applies this to the atheist this way:

I hold that there is vincible ignorance on various matters. But I deny that atheists are vincibly ignorant. Some might be, but not qua atheists. Whether or not God exists, one is not morally culpable for denying the existence of God. Nor do I think one is morally culpable if one doubts the existence of God.

Bill acknowledges that his exculpation of the professing atheist “puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.”

I’ll say! As Bill wrote in the post he linked to: “There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.”

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God has spoken. “So what?,” you might ask.

Forty years ago an atheist drew a sound inference:

Working from the premise that an omniscient, infallible being exists and that this being has revealed a proposition to man, it is a short, logical—and uncontroversial—step to conclude that this proposition is worthy of belief. . . . If the proposition comes from an infallible, nondeceitful God, it cannot be false; therefore, it must be true. George Smith, Atheism: the Case against God, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books 1979, 172. New edition with a foreword by Lawrence M. Krauss 2016

Atheism - The Case Against God.jpg Since the ultimate ground for drawing inferences (including Smith’s) is the existence of the God of the Bible, I take every proposition I find in the Bible to be God-communicated and therefore worthy of belief. To the best of my ability I regiment my thinking in accordance with the information they convey from God’s mind to mine.

So I agree with Smith, not on his authority but on Jesus’:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4 (ESV)

That’s how it will be when God governs the Earth. (Jesus said “shall,” not merely “ought to.”) As Isaiah prophesied:

And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Isaiah 30:21 (ESV)

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven! Matthew 6:10 (ESV)

Going forward, I’ll be exploring what that regimentation means. My conclusions won’t please all visitors, even the friends among them. But since I’m morally certain that there are more grains in the bottom of my hour glass than the top, people-pleasing cannot be my priority. Ephesians 6:6. Love the truth, I say, and let the chips fall where they may.

Image result for George H. Smith — George H. Smith

As for what Smith (and others) thought he achieved in that book: his metaphysics of “natural necessity,” epistemology of “reason,” and ethics of “life” (or “happiness”) jointly constituted the philosophy he adduced in support of what he called “critical atheism.” By its internal incoherence it disqualified itself from being a reasonable basis for affirming or denying anything. I exposed that incoherence thirty years ago. The curious among you may read an updated version of that exposé in Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God”, available as Kindle booklet.

“The Godless Delusion”: my truth-in-advertising concern

Image result for Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley A Catholic Challenge to Modern Atheism is the subtitle of Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley‘s 2010 The Godless Delusion. I applaud their popular presentation of the presuppositional approach to Christian apologetics in the course of taking down contemporary atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and many others. They rack these naturalistic bowling pins and knock them down, with strike after strike. Readers can cull a rich bibliography from the reference notes.

But what is distinctively Catholic about their challenge to atheism?

Granted, Madrid and Hensley are Catholics. So are some (but not all) of the authors they cite in illustration of their arguments. Paragraphs of The Catechism of the Catholic Church are cited on many of the book’s pages. But, unlike virtually every other book by Madrid, it’s not a primer of Catholic apologetics, that is, a case for joining the Roman Catholic communion.

Image result for kenneth hensley — Kenneth Hensley

They argue that the Christian worldview alone makes sense of our sense-making. But that approach to apologetics has been a Protestant, largely Reformed (Calvinist), enterprise for more than a century. Madrid and Hensley do not make that clear. Continue reading ““The Godless Delusion”: my truth-in-advertising concern”

Christ, our philosophical GPS

Image result for christ the wisdom of god The Apostle Paul speaks of “gnosis falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20). Why not also “philosophy falsely so called”? How would that differ from philosophy according to the elements of this world? (Colossians 2:8)

And what should stop a Christian who accepts Paul’s line of reasoning from suggesting “misosophy” as le mot juste for the false gnosis, the foolishness, the vain babblings?

Taking Christ’s words seriously, we conclude that neutrality toward Him and his claims is not possible. It is a self-deceptive feint. “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters” (Matthew 12:30). One is either in Christ or at enmity with Him (Ephesians 2:16), a hostility only He can overcome.

Therefore, a discourse rooted in the fatal conceit, namely, that the term “unaided reason” has real reference, is not open to the claims of Christ. Its proponent hates Christ and does so “without reason” (John 15:25, alluding to Psalm 35:19).

The fatal conceit of “unaided reason” is incapable of taking Christ’s self-identification seriously. It not only bakes no bread, but it is a vine that bears no edible or press-worthy grapes. Continue reading “Christ, our philosophical GPS”

Philosophy: its descent from loving wisdom to studying problems

The fifth footnote to the Wikipedia article on “Philosophy” cites an introductory textbook as follows:

Image result for philosophy

Philosophy is a study of problems which are ultimate, abstract and very general. These problems are concerned with the nature of existence, knowledge, morality, reason and human purpose.[1]

What is the relationship between the study of problems and the love of wisdom? Has the former been finally detached from the latter, assuming the one arose out of the practice of the other?

If the progressive, historical untethering of the study from the love is a fact, is it worthwhile to evaluate it, or need we only adjust to it? May we ask about it critically or would it be unfruitful, even unwise (in the sense of imprudent, impractical, or pointless) to do so? Did not Pythagoras, who coined the term, intend for the love to guide the study? Did he not assume that the study flowed out of and expressed the love?

Since the very beginning of the discourse called “philosophical,” its practitioners have held one conceit, namely, that reason is autonomous and therefore can identify, study, and perhaps solve general and fundamental problems.

Image result for rescher the strife of systems Even if self-identifying “philosophers” disagree about proffered solutions, they would all agree (if asked) that such diversity, what Nicholas Rescher called the “strife of systems,” can in no way discredit the conceit. I say “would,” for taking that conceit for granted is so ingrained that it takes considerable research to find its self-conscious articulation and defense.

Consequently there’s rarely been an occasion for philosophical rivals to express such solidarity. They hold that conceit implicitly, but absolutely. For them it is non-negotiable—ethically, metaphysically, and epistemologically—and, as such, invulnerable to discrediting.

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Bill Vallicella on Cornelius Van Til: An open mind and heart

Image result for bill vallicella Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, is currently reading Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith, and that delights me no end. Bill was the first philosopher to welcome my old site (now 15 years old) and greet the launching of this one (which occasioned his republishing a generous and stimulating critique of one of my efforts).

I thank Dave Lull (the “Omnipresent Wisconsin Librarian,” now retired) for alerting me not only to Bill’s “Van Til and Romans 1:18-20,” but also to “God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat? The latter is Bill’s response to my “God: “behind the scenes” (or “under the floorboards”) of every argument.” (I’m grateful to Dave for many other unsolicited yet invaluable leads he has sent my way over the years.) Image result for dave lull

After reading the second post, though, I wonder whether after a few chapters Bill’s thrown Defense against the wall in exasperation—one of my reactions, decades ago—figuratively speaking, of course.

In a blog post I can address only some of the issues Bill raise. That is, what follows does not answer Bill point for point. I’ll only suggest the lines of a fuller response.

Bill is ambivalent about Van Til: his “presuppositionalism is intriguing even if in places preposterous.” Bill doesn’t specify what merits that assessment. In any case Van Til’s distinctive charge was that all non-Christian thought—including much that is professedly Christian but infected with non-Christian presuppositions—is preposterous at its roots.

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