Creation is a miracle that is not beyond reason to discover.
How do you prove there was nothing before there was something? Are you going to subject all miracles to the test of reason, or just this beginning of miracles?
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Creation is a miracle that is not beyond reason to discover.
Creation is a miracle that is not beyond reason to discover.
How do you prove there was nothing before there was something? Are you going to subject all miracles to the test of reason, or just this beginning of miracles?
Over time, the universe is reaching sameness. If it was eternal, it would have already reached that point and stayed at that point.
Gordon Clark had a somewhat different approach. From what I understand, his most basic presupp or axiom would be logic, and that it is a property of God. I would agree that logic is a (transcendental) property of (the mind of) God, but I disagree in that it should be our most basic presupp
Andrew,
Clark's starting point, axiom, presupposition was Scripture, not logic. He says so in his books. To say otherwise is to misunderstand and misrepresent Clark.
Jim
Hi Jim, Sorry I guess I misunderstood, I did not intentionally misrepresent. I own a number of Clark's books but have not read any from them in years. Could you shed some light on the differences between Van Til and Clark for me and other readers?
Andrew,
It seems to be a common mistake. Your request is a tall order and has been thoroughly discussed on this forum. Just search and you'll see.
It's good to see that you have read some Clark. Many of his critics never have and yet they criticize what he wrote. I encourage you to reread some of those books such as, if you have them, "An Intro. to Christian Philosophy", "Religion, Reason and Revelation", Three Types of Religious Philosophy" and "Lord God of Truth".
Jim
Over time, the universe is reaching sameness. If it was eternal, it would have already reached that point and stayed at that point.
You have assumed a lineal development where there might be a regular cycle. Kind of like global warming, you cannot tell if your present observations are part of a movement towards a fixed goal or just an upsurge in a regular pattern. I would suggest that you are importing (1) a concept of "eternal" into the discussion, and (2) an assumption of development which cannot be accounted for. So it would appear that you are still dependent on preconceptions for your "mere rationality."
The problem here is that the conclusion is the first premise. Y presupposes X if and only if X is a necessary condition of Y's being meaningful. Yet this is precisely what is being debated.
The problem is that this is inconclusive: you're presenting Christianity as a theory: a convenient explanation for particular phenomena. It's the kind of "God-of-the-gaps" thinking that most serious philosophers, whether Christian or not, agree is not an appropriate reason for theism. The unbeliever is asking whether there is a God, not whether positing God would be a convenient explanation.
In some ways my thought is developing on this point (thanks to Wittgenstein, in part, though not wholly). In many ways, these personal commitments also define what sorts of statements are capable of having truth-value.
The everyday is the key to the philosophical. By creating this disconnect, you are creating conceptual confusion---part of the point of philosophy is to disentangle this confusion.
What logical problems? Where does the contradiction lie?
I think the distinction is just creating unnecessary confusion. Epistemology is concerned with how we know what we know, not with what sorts of propositions are knowable or intelligible---that's linguistics. The best epistemologists are teachers.Well it is "awkrered" to articulate but it does seem to be a neccessary distinction to me. Epistemology also deals with the justifications of something being "known". If I accedently guess the outcome of a coin toss I didn't really "know" how it was going turn out. But if I say I "know" the winning lotery numbers from last night and I can recite them to you it is safe to say that I "knew" that peice of information.
I'm curious as to what exactly you mean by this. The grand metaphysical schemes suggested by many are indeed the product of particular commitments, but for those who haven't produced such schemes, the method of exposing these commitments by this means is pointless. If you want to expose autonomy, metaphysics can be useful, but only for a very small subset of people.
Philosophy deals with logical problems. The problem of induction, the various paradoxs of analytical philosophy, the problems of ethics and metaphysics, these are all logical problems. You can say that these problems only arise withen philosophical conceptions of things true but the basic problems are fundemental our existance. We are logical therefore we cannot avoid these.
Also you are forgetting logical commitments of a sort. Take for instance a person saying that abortion is the most practical way to solve overpopulation. Now have they worked out a grand ethical theory name and all? No but their statments assumes something, that whatever is the most practical thing to do is the right thing to do. If you do not place this statment as the presupossition of their other statement than is is irrelevant to the discussion. Again this creates a logical commitment on their part that they are not even aware of.
Y= abortion is the most practical way to end overpopulation, therefore it is the right thing to do
x= whatever is the most practical thing to do is the right thing to do
Y presuposses X
If X is true than either Y is is not true, that is to say that abortion either is or is not the most practical thing to do
If X is false than Y is neither true nor false, that is that if X is false than the practicality of the thing is irrelivent to the discussion
I wouldn't say this, actually, because it makes God sound arbitrary. I would say that God is the definition of what goodness is.You are right if and only if "goodness" is that independent self-existant thing that I mentioned autonomous thought is dedicated to. Again if God appeals to some "goodness" outside of himself than he is not God, but unless God has a good "reason", to whom does He owe a good reason to?, which again would assume some standered of morality to abritirate over whether or not He has a "good" reason than He is simply abritrary. But if we regect this wierd Platonic notion of "goodness" than we avoid the trap because what God decides is right or wrong, based on His eternal charector of course, is therefore right or wrong. It is only after God has ruled on a particuler action can it be ruled to be right or wrong.
Yes but this form of foundationalism is much different than the basic beleif type classical forms take.
I'm not a classical foundationalist, just a common-sense realist. I do have properly basic beliefs, but that doesn't mean that metaphysical explanation is impossible, merely unnecessary for real knowledge.
Knowledge is real, I never said that but how to account for that knowledge is where Van Til chose to pursue the argument.
Their very discussion assumes that there is such a thing as right and wrong. If morality does not exist in an absolute sense than abortion is neither right nor wrong because absolute values do not exist.
A logical explination is different because you logically analyze the phenomina in question as I've laid out.
I would agree here, I love the later Wittgenstien. I just don't follow all the whacko disciples of his into the extreme sort of skepticism that some of them employ, rightly or wrongly in his name.
I point out that that as an argument for his beleif, being a fundamentalist is wrong, is the logical fallacy of mass appeal. Just because a large group of people believe that something is the case doesn't neccessaraly make it so.
So you see in entering the debate they have just stacked up all sorts of problems that need to be answered for their original assertion to be now be proven true.
Epistemology also deals with the justifications of something being "known". If I accedently guess the outcome of a coin toss I didn't really "know" how it was going turn out. But if I say I "know" the winning lotery numbers from last night and I can recite them to you it is safe to say that I "knew" that peice of information.
The problem of induction, the various paradoxs of analytical philosophy, the problems of ethics and metaphysics, these are all logical problems.
Take for instance a person saying that abortion is the most practical way to solve overpopulation. Now have they worked out a grand ethical theory name and all? No but their statments assumes something
You are right if and only if "goodness" is that independent self-existant thing that I mentioned autonomous thought is dedicated to.
not sure if this question was asked yet, but how does Van Tillian/Bahsenian presuppositionalism point to the Christian God specifically, other than that of Judaism or Islam?
I think you're right about Bahnsen taking it a little far. I'm reading his famous debate with Gordon Stein and he keeps insisting that only the Christian worldview can allow for universal laws of logic and morality. I was wondering if there is anything inherent in Trinitarian thought that permits and serves as a basis for things like logic. What I appreciate about both of them is that they demonstrate that Reformed theology calls for a Reformed apologetic - even to the point that accepting neutrality with the unbeliever undermines our basic beliefs.
Nature and Scripture
How is natural theology necessary?
Scripture does not claim to speak to man in any other way than in conjunction with nature. God's revelation of Himself in nature combined with His revelation of Himself in Scripture form God's one grand schem of covenant relationship of Himself with man. The two forms presuppose and complement one another.
It was necessary in the garden as the lower act of obedience learned from avoiding the tree of knowledge of good and evil man might learn the higher things of obedience to God. The natural appeared in the regularity of nature.
After the fall, the natural appears under to curse of God and not merely regular. God's curse on nature is revealed along with regularity. The natural reveals an unalleviated picture of folly and ruin and speaks to the need for a Redeemer.
To the believer the natural or regular with all its complexity always appears as the playground for the process of differentiation which leads ever onward to the fullness of the glory of God.
What is the authority of natural revelation?
The same God who reveals Himself in Scripture is the God who reveals Himself in nature. They are of the same authority even if the former is superior in clarity than the latter. We are analogues to God and our respect for revelation in both spheres must be maintained and it is only when we refuse to act as creatures that we contrast authority between natural and special revelation. What comes to man by his rational and moral nature (created in God's image) is no less objective than what comes to him through the created order as all is in Covenant relationship to God. All created activity is inherently revelational of the nature and will of God.
What is the sufficiency of natural revelation?
It is sufficient to leave men without excuse for their sin and denying the God they know they are created to worship but insufficient at revealing the grace of God in salvation. Natural revelation was never meant to function by itself (as above) but it was historically sufficient as it renders without excuse. God's revelation in nature is sufficient in history to differentiate between those who who would and who would not serve God.
What is meant by the perspicuity of natural revelation?
God's revelation in nature was always meant to serve alongside His special revelation. God is a revealing God and the perspicuity of nature is bound up in the fact that He voluntarily reveals. Both natural and special revelation would be impossible if God remained incomprehensible as He is in Himself (archetypal theology). Man cannot penetrate God as He is Himself - he cannot comprehend God. But created man may see clearly what is revealed clearly even if he does not see exhaustively. Man need not have exhaustive knowledge in order to know truly and certainly.
God's thoughts about Himself are self-contained but man is an analogue who thinks in covenant relation to the One who created him. Thus man's interpretation of nature follows what is fully interpreted by God. Man thinks God's thoughts after him - not comprehensively but analogically.
The Psalmist doesn't declare that the heavens possibly or probably declare the glory of God. Paul does not say that the wrath of God is probably revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Scripture takes the clarity of God's revelation for granted at every stage of human history. The God who speaks in Scripture cannot refer to anything that is not already authoratively revelational of Himself for the evidence of His own existence. Everything exists that is His creation.
It is no easier for sinners to accept God in nature than it is for them to accept Him in Scripture. The two are inseparable in their clarity. We need the Holy Spirit to understand both. Man must be a Christian to study nature in a proper frame of mind.
How does Greek natural theology and the natural theology of Kant result in denying any rationality higher than itself?
Neither allow analogical reasoning to understand the world. They start from nature and try to argue for a god who must be finite in nature. It starts with a "mute" universe that has no revelation and makes it revelational only with respect to the autonomous mind of man. No distinction is made between Creator and creature.
Kant's great contribution to philosophy consisted in stressing the activity of the experiencing subject. It is this point to which the idea of a Copernican revolution is usually applied. Kant argued that since it is the thinking subject that itself contributes the categories of universality and necessity, we must not think of these as covering any reality that exists or may exist wholly independent of the human mind. The validity of universals is to be taken as frankly due to a motion and a vote; it is conventional and nothing more.
Plato and Aristotle, as well as Kant, assumed the autonomy of man. On such a basis man may reason univocally (have the same mind as God) and reach a God who is just an extension of the creature or he may reason equivocally and reach a God who has no contact with him at all. Man is left with either God being part of nature (pantheism) or being so transcendent that He cannot get into nature (deism).
We're now left with a world where the scientist supposedly interacts with the physical world and can learn about the world apart from any reference to God and "ministers" who speak about God's revelation that has no reference to history and interaction with the world. Man is fractured intellectually where reason deals with things of the world and faith deals with things that cannot affect reason or the world.
The very idea of Kant's Copernican revolution was that the autonomous mind itself must assume the responsibility for making all factual differentiation and logical validation. To such a mind the God of Christianity cannot speak. Such a mind will hear no voice but its own.
Van Til says natural revelation was never meant to function by itself, what does such a phrase mean?
CT
Presuppositionalists believe that the Bible is self-authenticating and that only God can authenticate the Bible. Since the Bible is God-breathed, only God can authenticate the Bible. If something else besides God were to authenticate the Bible, then something would have more authority than God. This is what Calvinists believe.
In both cases, natural revelation is not meant to function by itself as if special revelation is only needed for some. I think, in one sense, he's dealing with the idea of some that one can derive a natural theology from natural revelation that does not need special revelation. Special revelation was always meant to work together with natural revelation.
Where are you inferring from Romans that all receive "grace" to perceive natural revelation?So to ensure I understand the discussion so far: general revelation is still divine revelation, which requires a miracle on God's part to enlighten to the mind whether believer or not. Romans teaches that all receive this grace to perceive natural revelation. In the case of the reprobate, God withholds performing the further miracle of enlightening the mind with special revelation. But doesn't this separate natural from special revelation?
This implies, to me, that revelation, because it comes from God, is miraculous and gracious.General Revelation is not what can be known about God outside of special revelation but what God reveals outside the Scriptures.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
I think the problem stems from the idea that you think of other knowledge as something man can attain apart from revelation. You're thinking of these things called "facts" (like a rock on the ground) and we can use our mind like an organ to organize and make sense of those facts apart from God. Then there's this other thing called "general revelation." General revelation, as I'm using it, includes that rock on the ground. It was created by God and is in covenant relationship with Him. I know about that rock not because I stand as an autonomous being that is able to take in disconnected data around me but because I'm created by God and stand in relationship with Him and everything else He has created in the universe.I'm piecing some things together ...
From post #52This implies, to me, that revelation, because it comes from God, is miraculous and gracious.General Revelation is not what can be known about God outside of special revelation but what God reveals outside the Scriptures.
Shown, revealed = knowledge. There is no other species of knowledge. All knowledge is by revelation from God. Full stop.Romans 1:19ff reads, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
So, God is active in showing general revelation to man; it is plain and clear, such that they are without excuse.
Hmmm....I guess if you're just speaking about the rock's characteristics then a Christian geologist isn't a better geologist just because he's a Christian but the same Christian ought to give glory to God for the knowledge he has through the things created and give God glory for it. In order to do the latter he requires special revelation because it's the only thing that reveals how man may be reconciled to God.Thanks for that clarification, Rich.
some further questions I have: if God has revealed the knowledge of a rock to the unbeliever, and all the properties of that rock (even the divine origin of it) are clear to him, then would you say that the believer knows the rock more clearly, because he has the light of special revelation? Or, are they both on the same plane of knowledge of that rock?
Not necessarily---there is nihilism, which says that moral statements are capable of being correct or incorrect, but that as a matter of fact, all of them are incorrect.
And all that you can get from this is the particular set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the phenomena. What do will never get is the particular theory that is correct.
For that matter, I don't follow Wittgenstein's conception of language fully. I just finished writing an essay on the implications of his thought in theology and it's scary what it does. I also sat in on a series of lectures on Wittgenstein by Peter Hacker---really cool stuff.
No, but if enough people start to agree on something, it becomes fairly likely that the belief is produced by some properly-functioning part of our faculties.
The end result, though, is that you simply have a good discussion regarding their viewpoint. Where is the point of contact for a discussion of whether or not Christianity is the case?
I would argue that in the former case, you most likely didn't form a belief concerning the outcome of a coin toss. Epistemology, as I said, deals with how beliefs are warranted, and how we make knowledge claims.
They are puzzles, not problems---conceptual confusions, in many cases. The few places where we do have a real problem are places where we simply have to come up with some way to live with the ambiguity.
And how is induction a problem?
Indeed it does: that overpopulation is a problem, and enough of a problem that a measure like abortion is an appropriate countermeasure.
But it is. For do we not say that God is Good? And if God's nature is simple, then that would mean that whatever God is said to be must be essential to Him. Therefore, since God's nature is unchanging, self-existent, and autonomous, goodness is the same way, since God is good, or goodness. The paradox of Euthyphro is answered with a resounding "yes."
Well I certainly agree that thought and logic flow out of the "Christian worldview" but my own view is that this is not philosophically derived. I know I'll probably have people dispute with me on this point but my views on these things are more basic.
I find it interesting that all the major presuppositionalists I've followed give a history of philosophy (Bahnsen, Clark, Frame, etc) and all the systems that try to provide a comprehensive philosophical framework are shown to be failures. Yet, it seems to me, that the same apologists pretty much stick fundamentally to the boundaries of human knowledge within a philosophical framework to define metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. There is an effort to comrehend reality, within the realm of human thinking.
The question you ask is loaded. It sort of asks: How can you prove philosophically that we need God for morality and logic My answer would sort of make me seem to some like some hayseed: "Well, how would man even think if he didn't even have a mind?" In other words, of course people have to borrow from the "Christian worldview" because every man is using the mind He was given as a gift from God as a weapon against His creator! God is basic to all human thought as Creator and Knower and Revealer.
I had to answer some questions for a course I took as a type of book report for The Infallible Word. The following is based upon Chapter 2 of the Book, which was written by Van Til and encapsulates things well in my view:
Since nihilism is basically self-refuting I think that hardly settles things because you have only substituted "correct" and "incorrect" for "right" and "wrong".
I don't know, why is satisfying the conditions not correct?
I would agree, so he may think he "knew it" but he really didn't.
Induction is a problem for the unbeleiver because they cannot account for their presupposition of the uniformity of nature.
Is Peter Hacker's stuff on the web? On the theological stuff have you read Goerge Lindbeck? I haven't but I know he takes an extreme Wittgenstienian view towards doctirne.
The problem comes when you try to foster it up as proof of something because then the whole "what about the Nazi's?" question is a legitamate problem because it was propt up as proof.
It is not to say that they no longer can believe that murder is wrong but only that they cannot accuse God of murder because they have no logical basis for doing so
If I am just critiquing than I don't have to make a point of contact but if they ask me to, which they usually do, than I develop a less complex version of a TA to show that we christians don't have the problems they do.
Only if morality doesn't exist
Yes but this revealation is analogical in nature.
No, actually---I'm talking about truth-value. Nihilism basically states that all moral judgments have negative truth-value.
Because there may be multiple conceptions that do so.
On the contrary, he wouldn't claim to know it---he just made "a lucky guess." If he were rational he wouldn't make a knowledge-claim on that basis.
How is that not a warranted basic assumption?
Not to my knowledge. I haven't read Lindbeck, but might I wager a guess that he's operating on the "regulative theory" of doctrine where doctrinal statements are seen as defining limits of God-talk rather than being factual statements about an actual being?
But what counts as proving something? We all generally agree that the Nazis were generally not very nice and that their actions were probably not very ethical. Why is this a problem?
But you haven't shown this. All you've shown is that their current theory leaves something to be desired. You have not shown that their intuition regarding the morality of God's action is wrong.
But all that this means is that Christianity is capable of accounting for it, not that it is the solution. Again, this is my critique of TAs in general: they demonstrate only that you have a nice theory, not that this theory is in fact the case.
Not necessarily---to say that overpopulation is a problem implies some sort of value system.
Well, naturally---at our best we can be good in a creaturely way. This is the difference between Clarkianism and Van Tillianism, and also between the Thomist and Scotist view of universals.
I think you're right about Bahnsen taking it a little far. I'm reading his famous debate with Gordon Stein and he keeps insisting that only the Christian worldview can allow for universal laws of logic and morality. I was wondering if there is anything inherent in Trinitarian thought that permits and serves as a basis for things like logic. What I appreciate about both of them is that they demonstrate that Reformed theology calls for a Reformed apologetic - even to the point that accepting neutrality with the unbeliever undermines our basic beliefs.
Here is a link to the definition of nihilism, which clearley states that there are no values.
But is not this statement itself a moral judgment?
It is a good question to raise, don't get me wrong, but it confuses the two types of explinations. Saying that morality must exist for any moral talk to be either true or false is a logically neccessary connection between two statements.
A "pure" thing is a perfect thing
Also it is not a scientific explination because all moral arguments attempt to carry logical force as to why you shoul or shouldn't do something.
I agree that he is not being rational but ordinary people make these sorts of claims all the time
It is if and only if warrant is the beggining and end of epistemology
Now I can see where you and I assume him would call these tougher questions extreme skepticism but I think that critique fails when you analyze the sorts of deeper beleifs, like moral ones, because they are legitimate questions, hence the existance of western philosopy
And the Nazi's generally agree that they were doing the right thing, so who is correct us or them? Thats the problem.
If the unbeleiver cannot prove both those statements than his or her original statment is unproven. Do you think they can hypothetically or actually prove both those?
Also if no other worldview can account for it than how is this not "proof"?
Again we are not giving a sociological explination for why morals exist in society but a logical explination for it, so this is more than just a theory.
If good means the same to both the Creator and the creature than it must be an independent standered that exists outside both God and man and they are both "moraly" accountable to it.
Possibly the term means something different in different contexts---I heard it defined this way at Oxford, but it's possible that some who claim to be nihilists are actually positivists.
No, simply a statement of linguistics.
Granted---but Christianity is a theory of accounting. It may be the most likely theory, it may be the simplest theory, but it is a theory. It is not a set of possible preconditions.
Not necessarily---pure gold is not perfect gold, but undiluted gold.
The problem, James, is that the Christian conception fares little better on this count: you may say "because the Lord saith" but the unbeliever will ask why he should do anything the Lord saith.
I don't see them saying that: I see them saying "it was a lucky guess."
But inductive reasoning is a basic operation of our cognitive powers---it is a basis for knowledge. Forcing a man into skepticism is a useful rhetorical tool for showing that his position is absurd. What it does not do is to show that he had no basis for induction in the first place---it shows that he had been taken captive by wild speculation.
Western philosophy lost its way when it started thinking that every assertion needed some sort of argument to support it in order to count as knowledge. When the burden of proof came to be placed on the knower and not on the skeptic. How is morality not a basic intuition? What we are disagreeing on is how moral judgments work---those who claim that moral judgments are meaningless are ignoring the fact that we make meaningful statements about morality.
They happen to be wrong. All that this proves is that there is a disagreement---moral relativism is not even a warranted conclusion from this. To say that Adolf Hitler believes contrarily to myself may just be proof that he is a sociopath.
No---I think that they believe these to be basic assumptions of all right-thinking people. They are wrong, but that's the idea: James, they don't recognize your question.
Because all that this does is to make Christianity the most likely of the theories thus far put forward.
But it is just a theory: that's the problem. Unless you can prove that necessary connection, where is the force of the argument? When you say that God is necessary for morality, you are asserting that God is a necessary precondition, which means that you must prove that if X (morality) then Y (God): if morality then God. If you fail to do this, then you're left with Christianity as the only adequate theory thus far put forward. In any logical form, the premises must be shown or assumed true in order for the conclusion to follow.
Not necessarily---according to Clark, it means that God has infused us with Divine goodness.