Posted on 10/02/2001 12:40:33 PM PDT by What about Bob?
Biblical Christianity, properly defined in terms of classical Protestantism, offers a radical philosophical critique of non-Christian thought. This Christian critique is radical in the sense that it challenges the very core of non-Christian pretensions and demonstrates that non-Christian thought, whether atheistic, agnostic, or religious, ultimately destroys rationality, science, ethics, and every other aspect of human experience.
Moreover, since a properly Biblical critique ought to attack the heart of non-Christian thinking, it may not assume the very standards it demonstrates as futile (a lá Aquinas, Swinburne, etc.) or capitulate to relativism or fideism (a lá Plantinga; Kierkegaard, etc.) or subserviently argue that the Christian worldview is merely "probable" (a lá Clark, Montgomery, Geisler, Moreland, etc.). A properly Biblical critique will not only demonstrate the utter futility of non-Christian thought, it will positively demonstrate that the Christian view of reality is intellectually inescapable. As Cornelius Van Til has argued, "Christianity can be shown to be, not `just as good as' or even `better than' the non-Christian position, but the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience."
I will begin with a brief elaboration of a Christian critique of non-Christian thought and then turn to summarize the positive argument for the Christian view of reality. Though I focus on "secular" non-Christian outlooks in the history of philosophy, the same types of problems arise in "religious" non-Christian outlooks (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.), but that discussion is the topic of a different essay.
Epistemological autonomy is the view that the human mind is the final criterion of knowledge. According to this view, common to non-Christian thinkers from Thales to Derrida, the Christian God has to be either non-existent or irrelevant to epistemological concerns. Human categories alone are necessary to determine modality, truth, and value. From a Christian perspective, autonomy is a rebellious attempt to deify human categories or some aspect of creation by attempting to usurp the Creator's functions -- i.e. replacing the Creator with the creature (Rom. 1:25). Nevertheless, the result of this attempt to be epistemologically independent of the Christian God is epistemological futility.
The basis for the foregoing conclusion may be sketched as follows:
(I) Non-Christian autonomy may exemplify itself in three primary ways -- epistemological competence, incompetence, or a mixture of competence and incompetence.
(A) Non-Christians thinkers who emphasize the first of these three options are those who maintain that the human mind is competent to interpret, evaluate, and describe reality (e.g., Parmenides, Aristotle, the Rationalists, the Empiricists, etc.).
(B) Non-Christian thinkers who emphasize the second of these three options are those who maintain that the human mind is incompetent to be determinative for reality since humans are finite and reality is characterized by chance eventuation (e.g., the Sophists, various subjectivist traditions, Nietzche, the Existentialists, the later Wittgenstein, Derrida).
(C) Finally, non-Christian thinkers who consciously aim to synthesize the first two options are those who admit that the human mind is partly competent and partly incompetent (e.g., Plato: the realms of Being vs. Becoming; Kant: the realms of the Phenomena vs. the Noumena).
(II) Each of these three non-Christian emphases ultimately destroys knowledge and leaves the non-Christian with radical ignorance about the world, truth, and values.
(A) Those thinkers who maintain that the human mind is competent to serve as its own criterion of truth ultimately encounter their own finitude; their particular rational scheme cannot account for everything since the autonomous theorist does not have God's abilities. Instead of the proposed exhaustive scheme of reality, the non-Christian will either deny or ignore whatever doesn't fit his rational scheme, thus compromising the proposed scheme (e.g., Parmenides' "illusion" of change; Aristotle's unformed matter; the Logical Positivists' "rejection of metaphysics") and radically limit knowledge to trivial and/or unsubstantive claims that will apparently fit within the scheme (e.g., Descartes' "cogito"; the Empiricists' vacuous sense perceptions).
But whatever the particular tack, the presumed autonomous competence finally reduces to epistemological incompetence -- the rational scheme fails leaving subjectivism and skepticism.
(B) Those thinkers who maintain that the human mind is incompetent to serve as its own criterion of truth do not fare any better. Though apparently more humble in their refusal to make the human mind schematize reality, they nonetheless determine to play the autonomous God in their own subjective reality. Nevertheless, they cannot defend their claim to autonomous incompetence without invoking some of the objective standards of their "opponents," the autonomous competents. In other words, autonomous incompetents must turn to objective, rational schemes in order to defend their opposition to objective knowledge (e.g., Protagoras' defense of "better" views in the midst of a radical relativism; the later Wittgenstein's "proper use" of language; Derrida's use of logocentrism to urge us to abandon logocentrism). Similarly, autonomous incompetents evidence the weakness of their subjectivism by their practical inconsistencies (e.g., Marx's opposition to injustice; Derrida's support for Nelson Mandela).
In a direct reversal of the first non-Christian option, the presumed autonomous incompetence finally reduces to epistemological competence -- subjectivism needs objective schemes. Non-Christian incompetence fails and starts the circle all over again.
(C) Perhaps the way out of this non-Christian futility is a conscious synthesis of the first two options along the lines of a Plato or Kant. But futility plus futility will not rescue the non-Christian thinker. The same problems raised against the first two options will arise again. For example, Plato's attempt to exhaustively explain reality in terms of a synthesis of Forms (unchanging; immaterial; human competence) with the realm of Becoming (constant change; material; human incompetence) must have, but cannot have, an unchanging Form of change. His whole synthesis collapses.
Similarly, Kant's synthesis of competence and incompetence demands that we can say something rational about the noumenal realm (knowledge of the unknowable) and denies that we can ultimately know the "things-in-themselves" of the phenomenal realm (no-knowledge of the knowable). Autonomous syntheses such as these merely compound the epistemological futilities of non-Christian thought.
Van Til noted that "all the antinomies of antitheistic reasoning are due to a false separation of man from God." Such a separation inevitably leads to the destruction of knowledge. I turn now to briefly examine a particular, contemporary example of non-Christian thought.
Kurtz' text noted above is replete with examples of how the commitment to autonomous competence gives way to autonomous incompetence and the destruction of knowledge. Consider his comments regarding the knower and the standards of knowledge:
The Knower: On the one hand, we as supposedly autonomous beings have knowledge because "experience and reason are drawn upon in ordinary life and in the sophisticated sciences to establish reliable knowledge" (p. 23); "There is a well-established body of knowledge" (p. 37). Moreover, Kurtz advocates an epistemology of "the act" which rescues us from the "traps of earlier theories of experience" (e.g. the ego-centric predicament) in that the "external world is a precondition for internal awareness" (p. 32). Autonomous, competent knowledge is so reliable that Kurtz can unhesitatingly describe religious opponents as mystics living in "a world of fantasy" and "romantic superstition" (p. xi).
Yet on the other hand, this competent, robust account of knowledge encounters its finite limits and admits its incompetence: "many things in the universe remain beyond our present understanding, transcending the present boundaries of knowledge" (p. 316). In fact, human knowledge "is not an absolute picture of reality" (p. 34), nevertheless, the skeptic's more heroic stance is to deny that transcendental "forms of reality are knowable or meaningful" (p. 26).
Obviously Kurtz is embroiled in a vitiating tension. His commitment to the competence of human categories is undermined by their finitude. If autonomous categories are so limited as to leave, now or forever, much of reality "unknowable" then Kurtz cannot speak with any boldness whatsoever about our present knowledge since there might be some factor in this unknown realm which makes our robust claim to knowledge false. Kurtz simply can't justify the claim of epistemological competence. On his own terms, then, we can have no knowledge.
Even if we ignore this tension, how does Kurtz' epistemology of "the act" give us any non-trivial knowledge? Though he claims to get beyond the ego-centric predicament, he doesn't get anywhere important. In generous terms, the most his view provides us with is the bare knowledge that there are external objects. But there are light-years between this trivial claim and a "body of well-established knowledge."
The Standards of Knowledge: Knowledge requires objective standards, and, on the side of epistemological competence, Kurtz speaks of "deductive necessity" (p. 38), "logical consistency" (p. 46), "canons of induction" (p. 55), "the rule of contradiction" (p.28), "simple and beautiful mathematical and causal laws" (p. 292), "the magnificent splendor of nature and the order and regularities we discover in it" (p. 316), and the cosmos appearing "to behave in terms of immutable and universal laws" (p. 288).
Yet with equal vigor, on the side of epistemological incompetence, he must defend the view that "there are no firm and unchanging, absolute binding principles involved in scientific inquiry" (p. 44). "There are failures in nature and there are fluke occurrences.....Chance factors intervene" (p. 291). Moreover, evolution is a "key principle in interpreting the universe" (p. 288) and most notably, "Change is not a human invention, but a cosmic fact, applying to all forms of life" (p. 289).
Such horrendous epistemological conflicts within a non-Christian worldview are common; they are results of epistemological autonomy. First, we can challenge the non-Christian to justify the standards of rationality he appeals to. Kurtz ultimately justifies the standards of inductive and deductive logic as "simply convenient rules of inquiry, vindicated by their consequences" (p. 88). Aside from Kurtz' question-begging appeal to pragmatic "vindication," if the standards of rationality are merely convenient rules, then we need not take anything Kurtz says seriously, including his objections to Christianity.
But even more damaging on this score is the metaphysical conflict between logical laws which are supposedly necessary and unchanging that magically appear in a non-Christian cosmos of "no unchanging principles," where change applies to all of life. Which is it? Whichever path Kurtz follows will lead to the destruction of rationality, science, ethics, etc.
None of the above criticisms and challenges are unique to Paul Kurtz. You will find the same problems in atheists such as Nielsen, Flew, Parsons, Martin, and throughout non-Christian philosophies and religions. Non-Christians need to justify these elementary concerns about their worldview before they attempt to foist their secular myths upon Christians. To reverse a line from Kurtz, "[Christian] skeptics ought to refuse to be lured by the [autonomous] myths of the day."
Hence, instead of hopelessly attempting to determine truth by means of finite products of chance, a Christian view of reality acknowledges the Christian God as the inescapable precondition of all thought. Thus we offer a transcendental argument to establish the truth of Christianity: If the Christian view of reality is not true, then knowledge is impossible. Only the Christian view of reality provides the conditions necessary for logic, induction, scientific progress, ethics, history, and the arts. As Van Til says, "Science, philosophy, and theology find their intelligible contact only on the presupposition of the self-revelation of God in Christ." Hence, a consistent Christian philosophy takes most seriously Christ's claim that "without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). Though non-Christians will strenuously object to such claims, their objections against Christianity will all the while presuppose the truth of Christianity.
Also, the modernist may ahve to squirm to respond to this approach. But the post modernist simply says "boring" and swtiches the channel. There aren't many real modernists left.
Rippin
"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
"I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
"But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
"I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?
"EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
"Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
"As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word 'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.
"No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.
"It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
"When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE: It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every principle of moral justice. -- Author.]
"When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.
"When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.
"It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story.
"It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud."
----Thomas Paine
There's alot of this going around on the Crevo threads, wouldn't ya say??
Are you a pure communist or what? I know of no other social force that is expressly not religious with which to test your assertion.
No, some religions exalt the human spirit more than others. This is the teaching of Christianity, but I guess you oppose that view. Where do you think the false method of moral equivocation comes from?
Rippin
It's also wise to study the words of the "prophet" to see if what he prophesizes comes to light.
Resistance is futile.
Please read one of our tracts ...
Paul Kertz is Buffalo's resident atheist...He is a "prime candidate" for an move of God!
Properly defined? By whom?
Already read it in it's entirety by the second comment, of course. (Grin). But thanks for the bump.
I didn't used to be as Van Til-lian as I have become -- partly because I have read very little Van Til, partly because in my early theological studies as a late teen I was probably (egads) a bit of a Thomist -- but I find myself becoming more Van Tillian the more that I argue theology outside of Reformed circles...
Belial writes:
You have to realize it's next to impossible to start ready a long, pretentious essay that starts like this:
[...]
Sorry. Whatever a belief in Christianity is, it's not the base of rationality.
Dang, Rippin...can you call 'em or what?
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