Hitchens went and got him some education. He writes,
Quo warranto is a very ancient question, meaning "by what right?" You ask me for my "warrant" for a code of right conduct and persist in mistaking my answer for an evasion. I in turn ask you by what right you assume that a celestial autocracy is a guarantee of morals..."
Here it at least looks like he might be dithering towards the only really satisfactory atheistic response to Wilson's question, which I pointed out some weeks ago. But he only gets a D+ or maybe a C-. He still seems to think that he himself can answer the question, that his former answers were not evasions, and so he tells us again:
My answer is the same as it was all along: Our morality evolved. Just as we have. Natural selection and trial-and-error have given us the vague yet grand conception of human rights and some but not yet all of the means of making these rights coherent and consistent. There is simply no need for the introduction of the extraneous or the supernatural
The only adequate atheistic response to Wilson's question is to admit that it can't be answered, by atheists or by Christians, followed by the suggestion that perhaps we can stand up for morality (without abandoning rationality), even if we can't answer the question, "quo warranto". But Hitchens thinks he can answer the question. He makes the queer claim that saying, "Our moral beliefs and behaviors evolved," justifies the assertion that those beliefs are true and those behaviors good, where "God gave us a conscience and requires us to behave accordingly" fails.
But the blind watchmaker, evolution, only knows how to make things that are good at surviving. It doesn't know how to make things that are good. If it gives them a "moral" sense, this will only be accidental -- the things they believe and the ways they behave will be directed to overall survival advantage, and the fact that the whole complex of our behaviors and attitudes ("good" and "bad") help us survive gives no warrant for the claim that some of those attitudes are authoritative, others reprehensible, some of those behaviors noble and virtuous, others base and detestible. As Wilson put it (and here he does what I wished he had done before -- he points to the difference between normative and merely descriptive claims):
Your notion of morality, and the evolution it rode in on, can only concern itself with what is. But morality as Christians understand it, and the kind you surreptitiously draw upon, is concerned with ought. David Hume showed us that we cannot successfully derive ought from is. Have you discovered the error in his reasoning? It is clear from how you defend your ideas of "morality" that you have not done so.
Pointed, eloquent, and compelling. Nicely done.
The cosmological argument goes something like this:
A cabbage doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that could just pop into existence. Nor could it have existed forever, all on its own, without any cause. A cabbage is a contingent being. It could have failed to exist, and it makes sense to ask why it's there. And the same goes for any other organic or inorganic aggregation of molecules. Physical things are contingent. Contingent beings do not exist without cause.
The universe as a whole is nothing over and above all the contingent beings in the universe. And when you put a bunch of contingent being together you don't get a necessary being. Even if the universe has existed from eternity past, (assuming that's even possible for a contingent being) it still makes sense to ask why it exists. After all, it's a cabbage, along with some other stuff. It didn't have to exist.
A self-existent being would be the sort of thing that could exist all on its own, necessarily, and without cause. Now, we may not be able to form much of a positive concept of what a self-existent being would be like. But we know enough about cabbages to say that a cabbage is not self-existent. And the same goes for the whole physical universe. A collection of atoms zooming around, interacting with each other in accordance with certain lawlike regularities, is not the sort of thing that could exist all on its own, necessarily, and without cause. And that doesn't change if you talk about Quantum Mechanical wave-functions, or Hilbert space vectors instead of billiard-ball-like atoms. Whatever high-powered math we use to describe it, the physical universe doesn't look like the sort of thing that could exist without cause.
But could there be a self-existent being at all? If such a being is not to be found in nature, could there be a supernatural self-existent being? What we have already said suggests that the answer is Yes. The contingent physical world seems to need a cause. If that cause were itself another contingent being, then that contingent being would also seem to need a cause. To posit an infinite series of these supernatural contingent causes runs afoul of Occam's razor, and would still leave unanswered the question of why the whole series exists. All of which suggests that there must be some non-contingent, uncaused being behind it all. If you deny that there is a self-existent ultimate cause of the physical universe, then you must make the very counterintuitive and implausible claim that either the physical universe is a self-existent being, or else that a contingent being, like a cabbage, could exist without cause.
To summarize:
1) Contingent beings [things that exist contingently] do not exist without cause.
2) The universe is a contingent being.
3) Therefore something caused the universe, ...
and unless one wants to get into some really weird hypotheses about infinite numbers of contingent, supernatural beings, ...
4) The ultimate cause of the universe is a self-existent, necessary being.
Atheists sometimes respond to the cosmological argument by asking who made God. "How did the universe get here?" is a puzzling question, they say, but it is no less puzzling than "How did God get here?"
The problem with this response may be evident already from the way I expressed the cosmological argument above. There is a big difference between asking why a self-existent being exists and asking why a contingent being exists. God is, ex hypothesi, a self-existent being. He is the sort of being that can exist necessarily and without cause. The cosmological argument suggests that some such being does exist and that the physical universe isn't it. If it is granted that there is a self-existent being, then the question "why does it exist" doesn't come up, except as a comment upon the difficulty of our conceiving of such a being. To grant that there is such a being is to grant that the question needs no answer. Not so with a contingent being like a cabbage, or like the physical universe. Granting that a cabbage exists leaves open the question of why it exists.
There is a similar problem with the atheistic response to EGMS that I explained in Helping Atheists Argue. Physical stuff, given what we know about it, doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that could have objective moral value all by itself. Moral normativity doesn't seem to fit with a materialistic worldview. If humans are fancy animals and animals are fancy chemical reactions, and there is nothing outside of these chemical reactions that could infuse them with moral value, then how did they get moral value? That question somehow seems more pressing than "how come God has moral worth?" The genuine authority of a moral standard seems out of place in a purely physical world, in a way that it does not seem out of place in world created by God. Now, if morality exists at all, then something must be inherently (non-derivatively) moral, and chemical reactions don't seem like the sorts of things that could be inherently moral. Since those party to this discussion, Christians and atheists alike, all believe in morality, it seems reasonable to conclude that either human beings are not merely physical things, and/or that their moral value and moral obligations derive from an inherently moral transcendent source.
I haven't proven that the self-existent cause of the universe and the inherently moral source of human morality are one and the same. But they might be. There isn't the same kind of "lack of fit" between self-existence and inherent morality as there is between each of those properties and purely physical stuff. And the same goes for the other things Christians ascribe to God: omnipotence, omniscience, etc.. If there is an all-powerful, non-physical being who made the universe, he may or may not have moral value inherently and without cause. But the suggestion that he does is not accompanied with the same kind of weirdness and implausibility that you get when you say that human beings, which are merely fancy chemical reactions, have moral value inherently and without cause.
There is thus a real problem for atheism that Christianity does not face. While the idea of non-derivative morality may be mysterious, everyone who believes in morality must allow for it. But materialistic atheism faces a different problem: objective value seems particularly out of place in a purely material world.
In the fifth installment of the Hitchens-Wilson debate, Hitchens writes:
[O]ur "innate" predisposition to both good and wicked behavior is precisely what one would expect to find of a recently-evolved species that is (as we now know from the study of DNA) half a chromosome away from chimpanzees. By the way, do not take that as a denigration of humankind. Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on. As Darwin put it:Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or nearly as well-developed, as in man.We can now observe this to be the case. But animal and human "altruism" is contradicted by the way in which species are also designed to fight with, kill, dominate, and even consume each other. Humans are capable of even greater cruelty because only they have the imagination to inflict it. ...
The fluctuations between social and anti-social conduct are fairly consistent across time and space: some societies have licensed cannibalism but they tend to die out, and others have licensed human sacrifice and infanticide. ... But I answer your question by making the pragmatic observation that, if we surrendered to our lower instincts all the time, there would be no language in which to write this argument between us and no society in which we could find an audience.
He is, of course, missing the point again. And Wilson, again, points this out:
I have been asking you to provide a warrant for morality, given atheism, and you have mostly responded with assertions that atheists can make what some people call moral choices. Well, sure. But what I have been after is what rational warrant they can give for calling one choice "moral" and another choice "not moral." You finally appealed to "innate human solidarity," a phrase that prompted a series of pointed questions from me. In response, you now tell us that we have an innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior. But we are still stuck. What I want to know (still) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin? Why do we call it "good"?
What Wilson has written is a perfectly good response, if you already get what Wilson is driving at. But Hitchens, clearly, hasn't figured it out yet. Of course, he should have. Wilson was quite clear in earlier posts. But not so much in this one. I think Wilson missed an opportunity here to explain more clearly why it is that Hitchen's response was missing the point. When Wilson asks "Why do we call it 'good'?", Hitchens might respond, "We call it 'good' because we speak English, and 'good' is the word English-speakers use to refer to that innate behavioral tendency that makes humans act in ways that promote the life and health and happiness of others."
But the point of Wilson's questions are not semantic but epistemological. And the epistemological "warrant" he is asking for is warrant for Hitchens's normative claims. This was an excellent opportunity for Wilson to explain the difference between normative and merely descriptive discourse.
Hitchens has described how moral behavior and moral concepts arise in the animal homo sapiens. It is a description that an ethical nihilist could agree with. Ethical nihilists believe there is no such thing as right and wrong. Of course they know most human beings talk about right and wrong and often follow the inner promtings that lead them to do what people consider "right". But, according to the ethical nihilist, those ethical claims aren't actually true. An inner promting to help those in need is on the same level as an inner prompting to rape. And the same goes for outer promptings: American high society discourages anti-Semitism. German high socity once encouraged it. An ethical nihilist may prefer one to the other, but he doesn't pretend that his personal preferences are anything other than personal preferences.
Both Hitchens and the ethical nihilist agree about the facts of history. But the nihilist does not himself make any normaitve claims. Hitchens does. What justifies this practice? To illustrate the nature of normativity, consider the following discussion:
Bill: Don't do that.
Bob: Why not?
Bill: Because it is morally wrong.
Notice that the conversation begins with a sentence in the imperative mood. The statement that something is right or wrong will, if true, justify an imperative. Now, one way to justify an imperative is to appeal to a person's desires. But that's not ethics yet. Don't put your hand on the stove because if you do you will get burnt, and (we assume) you don't want to get burnt. Go to college because if you do you will be able to make more money. Ah, but what if I don't care about money? What if I prefer to work for hourly wages, leave my work at work, and come home to my sweetheart whom I would rather marry now than four years down the road? When the justification of an imperative is based on desire, then what is justified is what Kant called a hypothetical imperative: if you want these things, then behave this way. But if you don't want those things, or if you want other things more, then do as you please. Morality says more than that, though. Morality issues what Kant called a categorical imperative: do this, regardless of what your desires are. The authority of these categorical imperatives, their normative force, is what is in question.
Moral indignation pressupposes normativity. You aren't indignant at someone who burns his hand because he didn't know (or forgot that) the stove was hot. And you aren't indignant at someone who chooses chocolate over vanilla because his tastes differ from yours. Morality presupposes that some desires are better than others. Not just stronger, or more socially acceptable, but better. Not just called "better" by people, but actually better. That's a normative claim. And there is no way to get from a description of how people behave, and of the evolutionary origin of that behavior, to a justification for normative claims -- not even if we include a description of the normative claims that other people make.
Wilson asked Hitchens what makes his normative claims true. Hitchens responds by describing the evolutionary process that brought it about that people make normative claims, and (sometimes) behave in corresponding ways. But the question is not why people make those claims and behave in those ways. The question is what makes those claims true, and why should people behave in those ways?
All of this will be familiar to anyone who has read Kant, or G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica), or C. S. Lewis (Abolition of Man). But many popular atheists aren't very well educated. Either they haven't read those folks, or they didn't learn the lesson very well. And I wish Wilson had taken this into account: if your interlocutor isn't getting your point because he's uneducated, then you have to educate him a bit. Otherwise he still won't get your point when you repeat it for the fifth time.
My last post was about an argument that challenges atheists to provide Epistemic Grounds for their Moral Standard (EGMS). I presented a reasonable way for an atheist to respond to it, without saying whether I think that atheistic response is ultimately successful. That question I was planning to address in a follow-up post. But Jared's comments made me realize that, before I do that, I need to be a bit more explicit about the structure of EGMS. In particular, I want to ask what is EGMS supposed to prove? Is it supposed to show that moralistic atheism is self contradictory? Or is it supposed to show something less than that?
Christian apologists often claim that EGMS shows atheism to be logically inconsistent. VanTillians, especially, tend to be very quick to charge their opponents with inconsistency. I had been chalking this up to rhetorical excess, but let's see if we can take the charge of inconsistency seriously.
The argument (EGMS1) might go something like this:
1) If there were no God then there could be no objective moral standard.
2) Moralistic atheism presupposes an objective moral standard.
3) Therefore moralistic atheism is inconsistent.
If the Christian's argument stops here, it is fallacious, for (1) begs the question. Moralistic atheists believe both that God does not exist and that morality does. The Christian apologist needs to give a reason why he thinks the truth of the former entails the falsehood of the latter. If the EGMS1 is to be successful, the heavy-lifting will have to be in the argument for (1). When challenged to provide such an argument, Christians often shift the burden of proof, saying, "Well, if there's no God, how could there be an objective moral standard? What epistemic grounding can you give for your morality?" If we try to take this seriously as an argument, we end up with something like this:
0) Atheists are unable to provide an epistemic grounding for any moral standard. Therefore,
1) If atheism were true there could be no objective moral standard.
etc.
If you think this is a good argument I suggest you go to your local library, check out an informal logic textbook, and look up the ad ignorantiam fallacy.
All of this comes from overreaching. EGMS cannot prove that atheism is logically inconsistent, but it doesn't have to do that to be a good argument. Atheists, EGMS says, are unable to provide epistemic grounds for morality. Even if that doesn't show that moralistic atheism is inconsistent, it does seem to be a problem of some sort for moralistic atheism. Call this argument EGMS2. It's an abductive argument: there's an important feature of reality that atheists can't seem to account for, and theists can. Therefore, ceteris paribus, theism is rationally preferable to atheism. If theists can ground morality, and atheists can't, then that's a point for theism, even if it's not the whole game.
It was EGMS2 that I had in mind when I wrote Helping Atheists Argue.
...
Come to think of it, there's a third way to formulate the argument: EGMS3.
1) It's not reasonable to moralize if you don't have an epistimically grounded moral standard.
2) Atheists don't have an epistemically grounded moral standard.
3) Therefore they are being unreasonable when they moralize.
The response (6) in Helping Atheists Argue can be construed as calling premise 1 into question. First why think 1 is true? Why should epistemological naivete render anyone unfit for moral indignation? Secondly, if 1 is true, EGMS3 is a double edged sword: it proves that moralizing Christians are just as unreasonable as moralizing atheists: neither can epistemically ground their moral standards ... which suggests that 1 is false, which makes EGMS3 unsound.
This was promted, in part, by the Wilson-Hitchens debate over on Christianity Today. Wilson has been pressing a rather common apologetic argument, and Hitchens, like an awful lot of atheists, is steadfastly pretending (?) not to get it.
The argument goes something like this:
You say, Mr. Atheist, that religion is dangerous, you exhibit a great deal of moral indignation at the idea that God would require eternal torment for minor disobedience, you claim that it is foolish nonsense and you disapprove of those who teach such foolish nonsense to their children, you decry what you call "genocide" in the Old Testament, and you fulminate with much vigor against all the enormities committed by Christians in history. Could you please tell me what justifies all this moral outrage? What is your standard for right and wrong, and why should anyone else think that your standard is authoritative? You and I both agree in condemning Stalin and Mao for the evils they did. But it's pretty clear why I condemn them. I think there is an absolute moral standard in the Bible. I can appeal to that for justification of my moral stance. But what can you appeal to? If the world is matter in motion, if human beings are just fancy animals, and animals are just fancy chemical reactions, and when we die, the cold, impersonal universe moves on, unconcerned; well, then, what grounds can there be for any moral judgments?
I am amazed at how much difficulty many atheists have even understanding this argument. Here are five common responses:
1) Your suggestions that religious faith is necessary for understanding morality is demonstrably false. Many atheists are morally upstanding people. They know the difference between right and wrong just as much as anyone else. If some (like Stalin) do bad things, so what? Lots of Christians have done very bad things too. Religion is not necessary for morality.
Many atheists make this kind of response even when the Christian's argument is explained clearly, so that there is no ground for such blatant missing-the-point. The argument is not that atheists can't be aware of moral truths, or that atheists can't be decent people. The argument is that they can give no reason for being moral. Like Christians, atheists can know that murder is wrong, but, unlike Christians, they cannot say why it is wrong. They may have their own personal preferences for how they would like people to behave, but personal preferences are no grounds for moral indignation. If some other atheist (say Stalin) prefers to murder in order to advance his own political power, an atheist who (rightly) condemns Stalin can give no grounds for that condemnation.
2) Atheism isn't a "worldview", anymore than "disbelief in leprechauns" is a worldview. It is silly to think that Stalin and I must have the same ethical theory (since we're both atheists). It's silly to insist that I derive my moral philosophy from my "atheistic premise" just as it would be silly for me to insist that Christians derive their ethical theory from their disbelief in leprechauns.
This again misses the point. The argument does not require atheists to derive their moral philosophy from the premise "God does not exist". All it asks is for them to derive their moral philosophy from somewhere. Anywhere! You don't believe in God or anything like God; so you can't ground your morality in that kind of transcendent source. Where do you ground it, then? In addition to believing that there is no God you have many other beliefs that not all atheists share. Fine. Derive morality from some of them. Give some indication of something or other that will justify saying that murder is not merely contrary to your idiosyncratic preferences, but is morally obligatory. What justifies your moral outrage?
3) Morality comes from reason and experience.
This response at least understands the question. But it doesn't answer it. How do reason and experience yield morality? Which experiences? What arguments? If you start with moral assumptions you can certainly derive moral conclusions, but by what miracle can reason produce a moral conclusion without presupposing morality in the premises? Describe a particular act of murder in great scientific detail -- where is the wrongness? Reason can't find it without assuming it. If you assume "human life is valuable" then you may be able to derive "death is bad", but how do you know human life is valuable in the first place? Why should it be any more valuable that any other chemical reaction? And experience fares no better. Experience can tell me that Paul killed Bill yesterday (I saw it with my own eyes). But how do you "experience" the fact that what Paul did was wrong? Was it that sense of revulsion you felt when you saw him do it? But a sense of revulsion is just a sense of revulsion -- a subjective response. If other people don't feel that sense of revulsion, or if they are willing to ignore it in order to get what they want, what can you say? Only that you don't like what they are doing. It makes you feel icky. And why should anyone care what makes you feel icky?
4) Morality comes from society.
While it is quite true that people generally learn their morality from the society they live in, the pedagogical origin of moral beliefs is not what we are concerned with here. We are concerned with the epistemic justification for a standard of morality. And a little questioning soon reveals that most atheists don't really believe that society provides that standard. Was the Nazi "final solution" morally justified because the society approved of it? If everyone in the world wanted to torture a certain two year old, would it be right? Most atheists believe (however slow they may be to admit it) that morality transcends human societies. But even if a few atheists are willing to bite the bullet and say torturing a two year old would be right, if society says so, it still does no good. Simply asserting that society is the standard doesn't justify the claim. How come I have to listen to what the society says? My society disapproves of stealing. But if I want to steal, supposing I can get away with it, why shouldn't I. Yes, I know "society" disapproves, but why should I care?
5) There's this fundamental moral principle (Kant's categorical imperative, Mill's Utilitarian principle, the Golden Rule, whatever).
Says who? Who made Kant an authority over me? Why should I accept Utilitarian ethices when I want to do things that conflict with it? Calling something a fundamental moral principle doesn't make it one. What justifies treating that proposition as a fundamental moral principle?
The preceding five response are pretty much standard fare. There seem to be very few atheists (and agnostics are in a similar boat) who can do better than this. Nevertheless, I suggest that the reason atheists do so badly is not so much because atheism is indefensible as because most atheists (even some of their public intellectuals) aren't very well educated. Consider the following:
6) I admit that the basis for moral judgments is a perplexing philosophical problem. But it is no less so for a Christain than for an atheist. You say there is a big, strong, non-physical being who will hurt me if I don't do what he says. So what? I'll admit, I don't want to be hurt, and I might do what he says for that reason, but that doesn't give him moral authority over me any more than a human tyrant, who can also hurt me if I don't do what he wants. You say this big, strong, non-physical being has more than just power; he also has moral authority. So you say. But why? On what grounds? Because he made me? Why should that matter? Most people think that a man has rights over what he makes with his own hands. But can all of morality be explained by projecting this principle into the heavens? Surely not. Why should I accept that moral principle in the first place? Suppose there were an all powerful being who made creatures just for the fun of torturing them. Would this be good? Why? What makes God's will "morally right"? You see that this is just as much a problem for the Christian as for the atheist. Morality is philosophically puzzling, but we all agree that there is such a thing. And we don't need to solve the philosophical puzzle in order to apply moral standards in ordinary life. It's OK, both for atheists and for Christians, to condemn evil, even if they don't have an epistemological theory that explains why they can do that.
It seems to me that this ought to be the standard atheistic response to a standard Christian argument. But it isn't.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances in the real world, I will not be able to access the internet as frequently as I have been, so I won't be able to keep up with the fast and furious pace of these discusions. Thus this is something of a final summing-up of my perspective on all of this, together with something I've been wanting to say for a while, but haven't had the chance yet. But first the summary.
Smijer successfully refuted the arguments in AiG for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Not only did he show them to be flawed, he demonstrated that the things they call "evidence" are not really evidence at all. He also propounded the more general claim: There is no evidence for Mosaic authorship. From this he inferred that Christians who believe in it are dishonest.
The two problems with this: he hasn't interacted with those real scholars who claim there is evidence, and he hasn't shown why the Christians' belief in the inspiration of scripture doesn't give us good reason to believe in Mosaic authorship. (I say "good reason" because I don't want to quibble over the term "evidence"---If we have good reason then we're not dishonest, regardless of whether or not that good reason counts as "evidence").
In response to the latter problem, Smijer argued
a) Christians believe in the inspiration of scripture without evidence
b) It's bad to believe things without evidence unless they are axioms
c) The inspiration of scripture is not an axiom
From my perspective, this seems a very unconvincing argument. It would only take one bad premise for the whole argument to fail. But the first two premises are false, and if (b) were true we would have no grounds for asserting (c).
So I argued that (a) was false. There is evidence for the inspiration of scripture--I mean stuff that counts as evidence even on Smijer's epistemology. Not overwhelming evidence, perhaps, but some evidence. Smijer hasn't offered any refutation of my argument. I don't blame him for this. He's being attacked from seventeen different angles at once; this probably just got lost in the shuffle. However, it should be noted that quite a few prominent Christians have pointed this out, so we have every right to expect a response to this before we start talking as if the conclusion, that Christians are dishonest, has been established.
Secondly I argued that, if we accept (b) and the epistemology that goes with it, we have no right to assert (c). For according to (b) we shouldn't believe (c) without evidence.
Smijer's evidence for (c) consisted in an appeal to Occam's razor. I argued that Occam's razor cannot apply to axioms, because if it did Smijer's own axioms would fall to a skeptical critique. He responded to that, and we've been back and forth on it for a while. I still think my argument is successful, but, I should point out that I don't need to prove this to accomplish my goal. Rather, Smijer needs to prove that Occam's razor does apply to axioms. After all, he is the one trying to get to a conclusion (that Christians are dishonest). And by asserting (b) he has put the burden of proof on himself every time he makes a claim that is not an axiom (this is one of the reasons the epistemology reflected in (b) is so problematic--it's very hard to live with). As far as I can tell, the only evidence Smijer has given for thinking Occam's razor applies to axioms is the fact that axioms are risky. But he hasn't shown why it's not OK to take the really big risk of possibly believing lots of falsehood, for the sake of a chance at some truth.
All of this is nothing new--it's just summary. Now for the addition. So far I've been assuming for the sake of argument that the epistemology of (b) is true. But now I want to articulate just a few of the reasons I think it is false.
First, there is the problem of self-referetial incoherence. According to (b) I should not believe (b) unless there is evidence for it. But I've never found any evidence for (b). So if (b) is true, I shouldn't believe it. Obviously, if (b) is false I shouldn't believe it either. So I won't. Instead, I'll believe what seems to me to be a much more intuitively plausible principle, namely: "If something seems intuitively plausible to me I can believe it unless there is good reason to think it false."
Second there is a problem with the so-called axiom, "my senses are generally reliable." While I agree that this is true, it doesn't seem like an axiom to me. For one thing, it doesn't seem to me that I actually use it. I find myself with the belief that there is a computer in front of me. I don't recall ever going through an inference from the general reliability of senses to this conclusion. It doesn't seem based on inference at all. One might hypothesize that there is a subconscious inference going on. But what evidence is there for this hypothesis? If Smijer's epistemology is right, we can't believe things without evidence. Perhaps it explains the fact that my inferences are justified. I don't think this evidence ammounts to much. Consider the following syllogism:
1) my senses are generally reliable
3) therefore there is a computer in front of me.
Obviously this is invalid. It's missing the premise
2) My senses are telling me that there's a computer in front of me.
But what evidence do we have for (2)? We can't infer it from the axioms. Now, I admit that 2 is intuitively obvious. About as blatantly obvious as they come. But on Smijer's epistemology, "intuitively obvious" won't cut it. On Smijer's epistemology, we shouldn't believe this unless we have evidence for it. But we don't have evidence for these kinds of beliefs. Rather, they are evidence for other things.
To save the epistemology we would have to add a whole bunch of particular items of knowledge of the form, "my senses are telling me this now, and now they are telling me this, and ..." But now there seems little reason to posit a subconscious inference. I'd much rather say that my belief in the computer is not inferred from anything, nor does it need to be. It just seems intuitively obvious that there is a computer in front of me. Doubtless my senses were part of the mechanism that made this belief seem obvious to me, but a mechanism is not an inference. The belief that there is a computer in front of me is not derived from the belief that I am having a certain kind of sensible experience. Rather, the two beliefs are both effects of an underlying cause, which is something going on in my brain.
As I see things, there is no need for axioms at all (exept, perhaps, purely logical axioms). We find ourselves with a number of beliefs, some of them more central to our thinking than others. We change the belief system either for non-rational reasons (such as when our senses deliver a belief to us) or for rational reasons. In the latter case, what happens is that we notice that two beliefs conflict with each other, and the rational thing to do is to get rid of the one that is less central. When two people disagree, the burden of proof is on the one who is trying to convince the other. Luckily, we share enough beliefs that it is often possible to overcome this burden of proof. But sometimes the only thing we can do is put the other person in a position where he obtains beliefs in a non-rational way. Sometimes this is legitimate, as when we display something to a person's senses. Sometimes it is illegitimate, as in brainwashing.
There are some things, things near dead-center of our belief system, that function somewhat like axioms (belief in God is near dead-center of my belief system). So long as the center is logically consistent, there is no way to reason me out of my central beliefs, IN ONE STEP. But it can be done in two steps. First step, convince me not that my belief is wrong, but that it should be less central; push it towards the periphery, while pushing something else toward the center. Second step, show that the belief conflicts with something in the new center.
For instance, belief in the infallibility of scripture used to be pretty well near dead center of my beliefs. Then it was pointed out to me that the first Christians did not have the NT, and yet they had the same faith I did. So it couldn't be an essential part of the gospel that the NT is inspired. As a result, my belief did not become less firm, but it did become less central than things like "Jesus is the Messiah" (though still more central than most of my beliefs). If someone could show me that my belief in the infallibility of scripture contradicts my more central beliefs, the rational thing to do is to give up the more peripheral belief. This is not likely to happen given what my central beliefs are. In fact, it was largely by reading scripture and believing what it said that I came to my most central beliefs in the first place. Nevertheless, I do not now hold these beliefs solely on the basis of my belief in the inspiration of scripture. Rather, they are fundamental presuppositions that are not based on any other beliefs. At best, I could say my belief in inspiration of scripture corroborates my belief that God exists, that Jesus is the Messiah, etc.. My belief that my senses are reliable is probably somewhere inbetween my belief in God's existence and my belief in the inspiration of scripture.
Had I world enough and time, I would talk about the implications of these ideas for apologetics. Perhaps some other time, or some other world.
This is a follow-up to a comment I posted on Smijer. I advise all to read the discussion there before reading the rest of this. What I’m doing here is responding to a criticism of Christian belief that relies on a certain epistemology. Even though I don’t accept that epistemology, I’m pretending to accept it for the sake of argument. My claim is that even if that epistemology is true, it doesn’t provide grounds for criticizing Christianity. I think this strategy is less complicated than the strategy pursued by Josiah and Kevin of trying to undermine the epistemology.
In this vein, I suggested that “the Bible is inspired” can be regarded as an axiom–--the sort of thing one can be justified in believing without evidence. On Morphemics, smijer wrote, “It just doesn't look axiomatic. One might conceivably assume a system where God is considered axiomatically... it seems very uneconomical to assume that God wrote a book, and this book I am holding is the one God wrote.”
I see two problems (this time the second one is more important).
FIRST, why do you believe that more economical axiom systems should be preferred to less economical ones? Is this belief based on evidence, or is it an axiom?
Suppose I believe your original two axioms plus axiom 3: “the Bible is inspired.” You hold your original two axioms plus axiom 3*: “more economical axioms systems are better.” Now it's true that systems 1+2+3 and system 1+2+3* conflict with each other. But how does that give us any reason to prefer one to the other? It doesn't, unless you give some reason (or evidence) for 3* or against 3.
Perhaps you think the Christian already accepts some kind of principle of economy. Indeed he does, but it is not 3*. By my lights, the best place to put Occam's razor is in your method of hypotheses. It says, roughly, "when given the choice between two hypotheses that explain the data equally well, go for the more economical one." On this account, Occam's razor is only about hypotheses for explaining things you already think are true. It has nothing to say about axioms that generate the data in the first place.
Notice that this makes your axiom system more economical, so you ought to prefer my account of Occam's razor to your 3*. In other words, 3* cannot be an axiom because it refutes itself as such.
More importantly (and this is the SECOND problem) Even if 3* is based on evidence, it still conflicts with 1&2. The most economical axiom system of all is skepticism. If you assume nothing, then you have nothing to explain, and your beliefs are maximally consistent and maximally economical. If you want to avoid this, perhaps you could alter 3* by making it apply only in some cases and not in others. Then you would need to explain why it applies in the case of 3, "the Bible is inspired," but not 1&2.
There are two ways of thinking about the problem of evil. On the one hand, someone might argue, "If there were a god, there would probably not be any evil in the world. But as a matter of fact, there is evil in the world. Perhaps it is possible that god has a good reason for evil, but from a non-biased perspective, this doesn’t seem likely. So the existence of evil is evidence that god does not exist. This will of course have to be compared with all the other available evidence before I come to a final conclusion." This argument is the sort of thing one has to deal with when trying to convince an agnostic of mere theism. I mention it only to exclude it from consideration.
More important for Christianity is the following argument: "There is an internal incoherence in Christianity, since it teaches both that God exists and that there is evil. Even if there is no logical contradiction here, it seems repugnant to the intellect to say that an almighty all good being would permit evil. To claim that God has a 'good reason' for permitting evil is merely an ad hoc attempt to patch up the system." Since this argument is directed against the internal coherence of Christianity, we may assume a Christian perspective in our response to it.
The typical response is the free will defense: a world of morally free agents who often do evil is better than one without any morally free agents. In order to bring about the good of a world with morally free agents, God had to grant libertarian freedom, which means he can’t prevent evil (if his free creatures want to do it) without taking away their freedom. Hence God has a good reason for allowing evil, namely, the greater good of libertarian freedom.
This defense might work, but there are two problems with it.
(1) One might question whether free will is a good reason for permitting evil, especially considering the vast and heinous evil that we actually find in the world. Even if we admit that libertarian freedom is good, it might not be so good that it outweighs all the evil in the world. In addition, it seems possible for God to prevent many if not all of the consequences of evil acts without taking away the freedom of the agent. Having freedom to TRY to cause suffering is sufficient for moral agency. We need not so often SUCCEED in actually causing suffering.
(2) One might question whether we do in fact have libertarian free will. Some people deny it. If libertarian free will were itself an integral part of Christian teaching then (if it weren’t for the other problems with the free will defense) we could rely on that to deflect the charge of internal incoherence. But as a matter of fact, nowhere does the Bible teach libertarian freedom. Of course, the Bible does teach that humans have moral responsibility, and implies that we can make real choices. But the claim “moral responsibility and real choice presuppose libertarian freedom” is a bit of philosophical speculation, not something the Bible teaches, and certainly not at the heart of Christianity. It may be true. My point is not to decide the question of whether or not we have free will, or whether or not free will is a good reason for God’s permitting evil. My point is simply that there is room for argument here. And this weakens the free will defense.
Is there a better defense? Can we find some essential Christian doctrine that the Bible clearly teaches, which, without relying on further questionable premises, provides a good reason for God’s permitting evil? Indeed we can.
It is an essential Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ died to save sinners. The crucifixion of Christ was not simply an evil, it was (from the Christian perspective) the worst evil that ever happened. So if we can show that God had a good reason for permitting that, then it follows, not with certainty but with a high degree of probability, that God may have a good reason for permitting all the lesser evils the world is beset with. It is an integral part of Christianity not only that the crucifixion happened, and that it was a great evil, but also that there was a good reason for God’s allowing it. We can even partly explain (not by speculation, but by good, solid, Bible-based theology) why this evil was necessary for the magnificent good of atonement.
It is thus rather easy to show, by means of what I hereby dub the Christocentric defense, that the problem of evil does not represent an incoherence or even a “tension” within Christianity.
Perhaps the free will defense also works, but why bother with it when there is a better defense right in front of our noses? Even apart from the logical problems with the free will defense, the Christocentric defense has this rhetorical advantage: it directs the conversation towards the gospel -- something an apologist might want to do every now and then.
Both Clark and VanTil are wrong. But VanTil is less wrong than Clark.
I think George Mavrodes’s criticism of Clark has hit the nail on the head. Read his paper here. I don’t really have anything to add to that.
Clark's response doesn’t even come close to answering Mavrodes’s objections.
VanTil’s problem is that while he claims that we can’t prove the truth of Christianity, he also says that all non-Christian thought is internally incoherent. Well, if we can show that all non-Christian thought is internally incoherent, isn’t that a proof of Christianity? Not a direct proof, to be sure, but a proof nonetheless. In fact, it’s a proof that gives deductive certainty.
Can we prove the internal incoherence of non-Christian thought without assuming the truth of Christianity? If we can then “presuppositionalism” means nothing more than “when arguing with non-Christians, use a lot of reductiones ad absurdam.” In that case, my only complaint is that this doesn’t actually work. There are a good many non-Christian world-views that are, as far as I can tell, internally coherent. Coherence just isn’t a strong enough test to rule out wildly false worldviews. If, on the other hand, we must assume the truth of Christianity in order to prove that non-Christian thought is internally incoherent, then I have two complaints: The first is a repetition of the complaint I just made. I don’t see how the truth of Christianity makes it any easier to show that, say, Aristotle’s worldview is incoherent. If we assume Christianity, then it’s easy to show that Aristotle’s worldview is false, but how could we show that it is incoherent? And even if we could (here’s my second complaint), Aristotle wouldn’t find our argument very convincing, since he does not assume that Christianity is true. It seems VanTil is asking us to make the following argument:
1) Christianity is true
2) If Christianity is true then non-Christian thought is incoherent
3) Therefore non-Christian thought is incoherent.
A non-Christian will, by definition, not accept the first premise. So he’s hardly going to be convinced by this kind of argument. Also the second premise is false. So in addition to being unconvincing to the non-Christian, this argument is also unsound.
We must make a distinction between a non-Christian person and a non-Christian system of beliefs. I do agree with VanTil when he says that non-Christian persons are always involved in a contradiction: According to Romans 1, they know about God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—but they either deny that they know God exists or they claim that his nature is other than they know it to be.
But the incoherence of persons is not the same as the incoherence of systems. The belief that Jehovah exists is not part of any non-Christian belief-system, although it is a belief that every non-Christian person holds (even though they don’t admit it). It is important for us to remember that non-Christian people hold these beliefs (does saying this make me a presuppositionalist?), but telling them that they hold these beliefs will not do any good, since they won’t be convinced. The only beliefs non-Christians admit to holding are those that are part of a non-Christian system of thought, and this system may be entirely coherent. Any attempt to argue with them that presupposes things contrary to their system of belief will have no convincing power whatsoever. (Does saying this make me an antipresuppositionalist?)
I admit that this argument is sound:
4) Christianity is true
5) If Christianity is true then all non-Christian persons know that Jehovah exists.
6) Therefore all non-Christian persons know that Jehovah exists.
Therfore I accept the conclusion. But since the non-Christian will not accept the first premise, he need not accept the conclusion either. In particular he won’t admit that he believes that Jehovah exists. My point is simply that in order to argue with a person we must argue with the system that he claims to hold. That system may be internally coherent. So, if we want to argue that non-Christian systems are false and that Christianity is true, we’re going to have to appeal to some considerations other than mere internal coherence.