Friday, March 22, 2013

Does God Exist?- Greg Bahnsen and Gordon Stein


The following audio of the debate between Greg Bahnsen and Gordon Stein "Does God Exist?" is a classic representation of the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God, (TAG) The transcendental argument was developed by Greg Bahnsen's seminary professor and mentor Cornelius Van Til an influential Reformed theologian whose work has gained momentum over the years. Van Til recognized that when it came to apologetics the reformed understanding of the faith was not represented by a truly reformed apologetic. Taking his cue from the philosophy of Kant who developed a transcendental approach to human autonomy which assumed that this autonomy was properly basic, Van Til developed an apologetic that proposed that the existence of God is ground zero- or properly basic- and unless this is explicitly or implicitly
assumed (either unconsciously or consciously) one cannot know anything. This extraordinarily bold claim is behind Greg Bahnsen's amazing defense of the faith. Gordon Stein is so non-plussed and quite unprepared for this approach- he struggles to get to grips with this form of argumentation.

"If Kant taught the world of secular belief the essentials of its own (until then, subconscious) theory of knowledge (“epistemology”), Van Til did the same for the Christian. As Kant said that we must avoid any trace of the attitude of bowing before an external authority, so Van Til taught that the only way to find truth at all is to bow before God’s authoritative Scripture. As Kant presented his view transcen­dentally, as the inescapable ultimate presupposition of human thought, so Van Til made and defended transcendentally the same claim for the revelation of God: that God’s Word is the only presupposition that does not destroy the intelligibility of human thought.Because of Van Til, we can at last define the essential philo­sophical differences between the Christian and the non-Christian worldviews. If Kant’s achievement makes him the most important secular philosopher of modern times, should we not say that Van Til’s achievement makes him the most important Christian thinker of modern times?"
In the quote above- John Frame the J. D. Trimble Chair of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida juxtaposes the philosophical starting point for all thinking (from Kant's "transcendental method") with Cornelius Van Til's own account and transcendental starting point.

Raised in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, he (Bahnsen) actively participated in religious activities. He first began reading the apologetics of Cornelius Van Til when in high school, and his absorption of these works influenced his later career. While attending Westmont College he began writing for the Chalcedon Foundation of Rousas J. Rushdoony and soon came to admire the latter's strong Calvinistic convictions.


In 1970 Bahnsen graduated magna cum laude from Westmont College, receiving his B.A. in philosophy as well as the John Bunyan Smith Award for his overall grade point average. From there he went on to Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he studied under Cornelius Van Til. The two became close friends. When he graduated in May 1973, he simultaneously received two degrees, Master of Divinity and Master of Theology, as well as the William Benton Greene Prize in apologetics and a Richard Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. His next academic stop was the University of Southern California (USC), where he studied philosophy, specializing in the theory of knowledge. In 1975, after receiving ordination in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, he became an associate professor of Apologetics and Ethics at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. While there, he completed his studies at USC, receiving his Ph.D. in 1978. (Wikipedia)
Kris Lounsbury July 13, 2012 at 9:16 pm  comments on the difference between the efficacy of the transcendental argument and the evidentialist system of defending the existence of God:

This is why it’s futile to argue with a non theist by presenting ‘evidence’ for the existence of God. The transcendental argument for God’s existence is both certain and irrefutable. It is certain because it is based on laws of logic which when denied actually prove the validity of the argument for God. In other words when the atheist tries to argue against God’s existence he is assuming a number of things which can only be assumed when one starts with the existence of the biblical God. As Dr. Bahnsen so eloquently said, “By coming to the debate the atheist has already lost the debate.” There is nothing ‘wrong’ with the cosmological, teleological, etc. arguments for God’s existence but they suffer from the same fate as induction when they are used to try to produce a certainty. When the transcendental argument is properly used it is both certain and irrefutable. The best proof for the existence of God is that it is impossible for the biblical God NOT to exist. When this argument is formulated correctly I have never found an atheist who can come against it. They usually end up name calling or with other ad hominem attacks. Very good video. Very good ammo for the next guy that says, “I just believe in science”. “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
While I would not entirely agree with Lounsbury's idea of the futility of presenting an "evidential" case for the existence of God I do agree with the rest of his statement. Actually he contradicts himself when he says: "There is nothing ‘wrong’ with the cosmological, teleological, etc. arguments for God’s existence..." Because he has just finished saying there is something wrong with an evidentialist approach, in his own words: "It's futile..."! On the contrary, the scriptures are full of people who did listen to the evidence and decided for it. But for all that, TAG is a formidable argument on behalf of Theism.
Apologies for the sound quality of this audio- this is now a relatively old reproduction.

I have just found out there were copyright issues with the audio debate and it has been removed from Youtube's public domain- which means I no longer can share it, however a ten minute summary of that debate is still available which I present below. For those who know me personally I have bought my own copy of it and am more than willing to present it locally.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Defending the Resurrection- Gary Habermas

Absolutely key to the Christian Gospel is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Imagine a scenario in which the truth of the Gospel were to be investigated through a court of law. Imagine a string of witnesses being called to testify of their eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus. Imagine another load of witnesses testifying second hand accounts of this miracle, friends of friends who didn't see it but knew and vouchsafed for the honesty integrity and sanity of those eyewitnesses. Now imagine  prosecuting attorneys invalidating many of these first and second order witnesses, thereby stripping down many attestations to a miracle to just a few. The bulk of the testimonies have been thrown out of court as "inadmissable" and the job is now to make a convincing case for Christ from what remains.

In his book "The Case For Christ" one time skeptic and investigative journalist Lee Strobel is on a case. We take this up from his book on page 305. ("The Case for Christ"- Lee Strobel, Zondervan Books 1998)

'As my flight gently banked over the wooded hills below, I was doing some last minute reading of a book by Michael Martin, the Boston University professor who has sought to discredit Christianity. I smiled at his words: "Perhaps the most sophisticated defense of the resurrection to date has been produced by Gary Habermas"'

In the following video post we join Gary Habermas, Ph.D, D.D as he gives a 80 minute defense of the resurrection. In this video he recounts some personal history. He was just awarded the privilege of using the historicity of the resurrection as a basis for his doctoral dissertation, a requirement of some 180 pages minimum, which in fact ended at over 300 pages. But- as a parting shot as Habermas left to begin this already daunting task- one of his examiners put a great caveat on what he was allowed to work from. Only those portions of scripture which were "vindicated" by higher criticism were to be admissible in his evidence for the resurrection. If the picture isn't graphic enough, imagine tearing out great chunks of the New Testament and then having to piece together enough verification for the resurrection to be utterly convincing from what remains. Rather than a deterrent to faith this has become a great testament not only to the scholarship of Habermas but a victory also to the veracity of the resurrection, without which we would still be dead in our trespasses and sins. This video is hosted by the Veritas Forum, a place for excellent video resources covering a wide variety of subjects.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Is Faith in God Reasonable?

"What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens? Or what hath faith to do with reason? Drs. William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg debate this all important and pervasive question concerning the reasonableness of faith in God. The nature of the question in this debate is no mere academic matter.

The question of God is the most important question. One’s answer to it will impact nearly all other beliefs one holds from common notions of morality to politics and from our interest and investigation of our world to what we take to be our purpose(s) in life.

Is “faith” foolish? By this, should it be understood to be blind? Or is it reasonable and, if so, by what measure and to whom is it foolishness? For many, Mark Twain is right on the mark when he said that “Faith is believing something you know ain’t true.” Yet the great thinkers of Judaism and Christianity like Philo, Moses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin considered faith to be an extraordinarily important virtue (moral and/or intellectual)! Indeed, it is not only the condition by which salvation is appropriated in these Abrahamic faith traditions (which are taken by insiders to actually be knowledge traditions), but it is the basis for movements from Mother Teresa’s compassion and our concern for the poor to Isaac Newton’s inspiration in science in light of God’s creation of the world and man being made in God’s image. Is faith in God reasonable? Ought we to have faith in God? Captured February 1, 2013 on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN."

(copied from: http://open.biola.edu/resources/is-faith-in-god-reasonable where this can also be viewed in its entirety- emphasis mine)

If you click in the highlighted sections below your browser will take you to other posts which are relevant to the debate at that point, this is useful for further background information.

Dr. William Lane Craig handles his subject with clarity and succinctness, Dr. Alex Rosenberg clearly struggles at times to articulate his view but the kicker for me was right near the end where a question from the floor totally devastated all that had gone before. To be fair and give Rosenberg his due Craig is a prolific and extremely experienced debater, and as Rosenberg was quick to point out a debate is not the ideal venue for exchanges of this sort.

I was intrigued, in fact delighted to see the whole question of Mathematics as one of the eight reasons for faith in God which I myself have had a look at.

At 2:40:43 in the debate, the crunch question to Dr. Rosenberg was asked by a young man, apparently a student which completely unravelled all the credible answers and postulations that he had given up to that point. This question which I have put in writing for the viewer to ponder was in fact the last question for Rosenberg and to my mind the most significant- and one which I feel Dr Craig himself should have asked and pushed.
"Dr. Rosenberg I wonder if you might help me to understand how your view is not incoherent, uh- do you really claim in your book that sentences have no meaning or truth value, even the sentences in your own book? How is that not incoherent, it's self refuting- um at least the sentences you've made tonight surely you think are true? Um but if even you don't think your position is true why should we?"
Rosenberg's discomfort and hostility is palpable and his reference to this "peurile" question (Childishly silly and trivial) makes it abundantly clear what he thinks of it. This whole question arises as a result of trying to fit  a naturalistic template over the mind/brain question. Rosenberg is a Philosophical or metaphysical naturalist. "Metaphysical naturalism holds that all properties related to consciousness and the mind are reducible to, or supervene upon, nature."(Wikipedia) You cannot claim something to be true and then deny the ability to know truth in the next breath, you cannot wax long and lyrically on the truth of atheism according to the findings of science and logic and then proceed to dismantle the foundation for believing logic. Reason gives us a handle on real states of affairs- to reason that atheism is true and subsequently conclude that consciousness is all illusion is self defeating. You cannot write a book on: The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions and then proceed to dismantle the idea that intentionality itself is illusional. This is precisely what C.S. Lewis alluded to many years ago when perhaps this idea was more in its infancy.



The nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche,(Twilight of the Idols, Ch. 2.) said- “I am afraid we cannot get rid of God because we still believe in grammar.”


I hazard a guess that Nietzsche eventually lost his belief in grammar as well as God, since he spent the last years of his life in an asylum spending long periods in silence. At least he was consistent.

“Human irrationalism and evil are the difficult things to explain in the Christian worldview, but the Christian can live with such mysteries because the only alternative is to renounce all meaning, to begin with atheism’s ultimate irrationalism. “Good,” “evil,” “reality,” “illusion,” and every other human word would be meaningless if atheism were true and the world were ultimately meaningless. The atheist believes that error and imperfection in the world imply the non-existence of a perfect, absolute God. Rather, error and imperfection in the world require a perfect, absolute God, because such concepts as “error” and “imperfection,” whether in the fields of mathematics, ethics, logic or science, would be meaningless without a perfect, absolutely rational standard by which to identify occurrences of imperfection, and without an ultimately rational structure to the world which allows concepts, whether positive or negative, to be applied, whether rightly or wrongly, to the changing realm of human experience. If God did not exist, it is not merely personal, psychological feelings of having a meaningful life that would suffer, but rational meaning would suffer.” Michael H. Warren Jr. (emphasis mine)

 I repeat C.S. Lewis:
“The validity of rational thought… is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing.”
"I remember once being shown a certain kind of knot which was such that if you added one extra complication to make assurance doubly sure you suddenly found that the whole thing had come undone in your hands and you had only a bit of string. It is like that with naturalism. It goes on claiming territory after territory: first the inorganic, then the lower organisms, then man’s body, then his emotions. But when it takes the final step and we attempt a naturalistic account of thought itself, suddenly the whole thing unravels. The last fatal step has invalidated all the preceding ones: for they were all reasoning and reason itself has been discredited. We must, therefore, either give up thinking altogether or else begin over again from the ground floor."

To top it off it also brings to mind what I have quoted elsewhere what Malcolm Muggeridge once said. Malcolm Muggeridge referred to "having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.” When your education reduces your humanity to mere animality as naturalism does we see the truth of Muggeridges comment of nearly 60 years ago.

All of this is not to say that Dr William Lane Craig did not have moments of weakness in his own defense of the question "Is faith in God reasonable?" And again just prior to the question that exposed the weakness of Rosenberg's position- a question was asked of Craig that I feel he answered particularly poorly. The question was: 

"My question for you Dr Craig is- the Bible says that Jesus loves us and wants a relationship with us and wants us to believe in him, he even showed himself to disbelievers like you mentioned, so to people such as Thomas after he was crucified to help him believe. My question is: why does Jesus not continue to physically reveal himself to people particularly on believers to show them that he is real?"
Here is a transcript of part of Craig's response:
"It's possible that in a world in which God's existence was as plain as the nose on your face, in which Jesus was constantly appearing in peoples bedrooms that they would get rather annoyed at the effrontery of this intruder popping into their- their houses all of the time uninvited and it wouldn't lead at all to a deeper faith or love in Him so I think that we can trust God's wisdom in providentially ordering the world in such a way that people are given adequate but not coercive evidence for His existence and the question then for us is: how will we respond to that, um it's not an adequate response to complain that you want more evidence, you need to look at the evidence that you do have and to make a decision on that basis. But I, I don't think that ah, um there's any reason here to think that God would do what you suggest, it- it may be that that would do do nothing in terms of ah bringing a greater number of people into a saving relationship with himself."

"Constantly appearing in peoples bedrooms" !!! I realize this is an off the cuff response but that is rather weak isn't it? People getting: "annoyed at the effrontery of this intruder [Jesus] popping into their houses all of the time uninvited" -? I don't believe Dr. Craig answered this serious question with the dignity it deserves or with the accuracy it entails. To many, the "hiddenness of God" is a question (at least on an intellectual level) which is a serious bar to faith. To be fair, this question came at the end of more than two hours of a sometimes grueling debate and perhaps it was too much too ask to keep that up, but on the other hand knowing Dr. Craig's theological perspectives I believe this really was a sign of the weakness of his own position.

The weakness exposed in Craig's position here is that on his terms Craig does not fully appreciate both the role of the Holy Spirit in salvation or the breadth of human depravity. To Craig, it only takes a clear defense and presentation of the Gospel and people will get saved or not depending utterly on the individuals own choice and their evaluation of the evidence, for him the influence of the Holy Spirit is a given. What is entirely missing on this view is the role of both the sovereignty of God and the extent and efficacy of the revelation of God. What would -in Craig's estimation- constitute "coercive evidence" ? Being knocked off a high horse, seeing an exceedingly bright light and hearing a voice which others said was like thunder yet was quite audibly clear to the one it was directed to? And what of being struck blind, would this not be coercive? St. Paul's Damascus road experience is not indicative of every conversion but it at least tells us that if God has a mind to, he will go to whatever necessary lengths He sees fit to accomplish and overcome resistance to the faith.

On the other hand Jesus makes it quite clear that if people- who say they see and yet don't believe on the basis of evidence they do have- a resurrection from the dead won't make a difference if God leaves them to their own devices:

 "...If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." Luke 16:31
There is enough evidence in the world to convince those whose hearts are turned towards God by the Holy Spirit but there will never be enough, not even the resurrection personally witnessed, will suffice if the sinners heart has not been turned through the work of Grace in the soul.

In this we see the sovereignty of God at work.