An Atheistic Critique of Christian Apologetics

_{EXAMINING EPISTEMOLOGY AND ETHICS FROM AN ATHEISTIC AND DARWINIAN PERSPECTIVE}

_{This post was originally published several years ago, more in the form of a dissertation. I am posting it here since it is no longer available anywhere else. I apologize in advance for the excessive length. I could not bring myself to break this up into several smaller posts. This post explains why I reject Christianity and traditional conservatism. Since I have been posting on the topic of traditional conservatism recently, I thought this would be a good time to share this.}

“I feel more in common with the Reverend William Paley than I do with the distinguished modern philosopher, a well-known atheist, with whom I once discussed the matter at dinner. I said that I could not imagine being an atheist before 1859, when Darwin’s Origin of Species was published…. As for David Hume himself, it is sometimes said that that great Scottish philosopher disposed of the Argument from Design a century before Darwin. But what Hume did was criticize the logic of using apparent design in nature as positive evidence for the existence of a God. He did not offer any alternative explanation for apparent design, but left the question open…. although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”—Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker)

Christianity was historically useful. Christianity is relatively functionally isomorphic to the truth, which made it vitally useful as a historical movement. Prior to discoveries made in the 19th century, the only logical alternative to religion was nihilism. Nihilism is not a philosophy that one can live by. Religion supplied an alternative to nihilism for centuries. As such, religion was basically necessary for the survival of the human species. Religion has many positive aspects. Christianity in particular is, in my opinion, among the most rational and useful of all the world religions. Nevertheless, Christians do have certain beliefs that I regard as dangerous.

The Roman Catholic is bound to support statism and oppose free markets, simply because there are papal encyclicals that teach the virtues of government intervention. Whenever the Roman Catholic approaches the questions of politics and economics, he is bound by his faith to look at it through the lens of official Catholic dogma. He cannot, as a Catholic, look at economics as a mere social science, apply logic to it, and arrive at the most rational conclusion if the most rational conclusion does not coincide with Catholic dogma. The Pope is the sole authority for the Catholic. Similarly, Calvinists and fundamentalists suppose that the Bible is the sole authority. Consequently, some of them have concluded that biblical law or theonomy should be the basis of all modern law—and some of these people advocate bringing back execution as the punishment for adultery, prostitution, and “sodomy.” (Cf. R. J. Rushdoony, Gary North, Gary DeMar, Greg Bahnsen, et al.) It is interesting to note that they do not apply biblical law without considerable cherry picking. They overlook the fact that Jesus identified pornography with adultery and recommended that you gouge your own eye out if you look at a woman lustfully, cut your hand off if you are tempted to masturbate, and castrate yourself to prevent temptation if you can bear it. (Cf. Matthew 5:27-30; 19:12) The existence of dangerous sectarian ideologies that seek to influence secular politics, in my opinion, justifies this attempt at refuting the Christian worldview.

The most powerful arguments for religion are of an abductive nature. There are three sorts of logical processes: deduction, induction, and abduction. Deduction is merely observational and descriptive. Deductive reasoning is based on observing phenomena and describing what has happened. Inductive reasoning is a processes whereby one infers general rules from repeated observations. Abductive reasoning is a process whereby one forms an explanatory hypothesis to explain phenomena that one has observed. The really weighty arguments for Christianity are those abductive logical arguments that come from Cornelius van Til, C. S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton. There are many versions of the argument, but they all reduce down to this: everything about the universe that we live in makes sense if we presuppose the truth of Christianity, but makes no sense at all if we assume that any alternative religion or worldview is true. Christianity, therefore, can be looked at as a hypothesis that was proposed as a way of explaining existing evidence. The atheist and the skeptic tend to just brush off this argument as nonsense. However, when you unpack this argument and examine it closely, you will find that there really is something to this argument. It is a weighty argument for a reason. This argument has historically been quite powerful. Prior to mid-way through the 19th century, Western civilization had not discovered any viable alternative to Christianity.

Christianity assumes that there is an Absolute Rationality behind the universe, a divine and personal Being, who has designed the world in which we live. The world was created and organized by an all-powerful entity. The universe is not random and chaotic, but functions in a highly rational, harmonious, and orderly fashion. There is a uniformity of the laws of nature because God has created natural laws to govern how the universe acts. Humans were created by God. Our bodies were designed to function the way that they do. He designed our brains and minds to function in a particular way, so as to allow for true rationality. He designed our eyes in a way that facilitates accurate visual perception. He designed our ears in a way that facilitates accurate auditory perception. He created us and knows what is best for us. He knows what we must do to achieve our own ultimate happiness. Consequently, He has given us a divine law and has revealed it to us in written form (theonomy or biblical law) and has “inscribed it in our hearts,” so that we can know it through intuition (natural law). As you can see, the Christian worldview explains the world we live in—it supplies us with a coherent epistemology (theory of knowledge) and a coherent ethic (theory of right conduct or morality).

The presuppositionalists, following Cornelius van Til, argue that this worldview is the only one that can explain the universe in which we live and provide a framework that allows us to go about living rationally and sanely in this world. The presuppositionalist brings up the problem of induction, which was raised by David Hume. Inductive reasoning makes inferences from repeated observations. For instance, we observe that objects keep falling every time that they are dropped, so inductive reasoning leads us to the conclusion that there must be some general rule or natural law that dictates that objects must behave this way. Thus, we arrive at the law of gravity. Hume pointed out that this method of reasoning is actually invalid—it is logically a non sequitur, it does not follow from the fact that we have seen tons of objects fall to the ground that objects must necessarily always act that way. The presuppositionalist says, “Now, let’s compare my Christian worldview to your atheistic worldview. Upon Christian presuppositions, it makes perfect sense that there would be a uniformity of natural laws because God has designed the universe to function just so. Yet, upon your assumptions—assuming that the universe was not designed by a rational being, but came about through random chance and arose basically from chaos—, we have absolutely no reason to suppose that there would be any uniform laws governing natural processes.” Thus, Cornelius van Til and the presuppositionalists conclude, “There is no intelligibility in any phenomena of the universe without the presupposition of God’s all-encompassing plan.”(Cornelius van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Chapter 9)

Then there is the evolutionary argument against naturalism, popularized by Alvin Plantinga, but which was better espoused by C. S. Lewis. If we assume that human beings came about entirely through random natural processes, then we have absolutely no reason to trust our own sensory perceptions and cognitive faculties. The Christian trusts his senses and his mind because he assumes that they were designed by a benevolent and rational God. However, the naturalistic atheist can make no such assumption. The logical structure of the human brain, upon atheistic assumptions, is really just the result of natural chemical reactions and colliding atomic particles inside the human skull. Why should I assume that the collision of particles and chemicals within the body should produce accurate perceptions, accurate logical deductions, and a viable structure of mind? Isn’t it much more likely that any conscious perceptions and thoughts produced by such processes would result in inaccurate perceptions, since the processes are random and are not being guided by any rational design? Why would evolution ever have produced a creature with accurate knowledge of the world around it? Natural selection would select individuals with characteristics that facilitate survival, but it would not necessarily select individuals with accurate perceptions and sound minds.

Another argument is the argument from universal morality, which was also brilliantly espoused by C. S. Lewis. All men share some basic ethical principles. We assume that some things are right and other things are wrong. If somebody does something that is “mean” and we dislike it, we may say, “Hey, that’s not fair.” If someone takes our spot at a table, we may object, “That’s my spot. I was there first.” We are assuming that there are some general rules of fair play that we all agree on—that the person who is not being fair is also in agreement with us on these principles of fairness. The person who took our spot may argue, “But you left the spot, so you have given it up,” but she will hardly ever say, “To hell with your morality!” (Cf. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Chapter 1) She will not dismiss the code of conduct altogether. On the contrary, she will try to claim the moral high ground. In actuality, we both believe that there are some general rules of fairness, justice, or morality that are, at least for humankind, universally applicable. Classical theologians, like Thomas Aquinas, referred to these rules as the natural law. There is a universal law; and a universal law presupposes a universal lawmaker. These laws were given to us by God, inscribed upon our hearts, and are the basis of our ethical codes.

Furthermore, we may add to these arguments the necessity of comprehensive knowledge argument. Cornelius van Til has argued that it is necessary for comprehensive knowledge to exist somewhere in order for real knowledge to exist anywhere. (Cf. James Anderson, If Knowledge Then God) Humans used to think that the world was flat, but new discoveries have disproven that theory. The discovery of new facts can falsify things that we once thought that we “knew” to be true. We used to “know” that the world is flat, but new facts have falsified that theory. Man is finite, so he cannot know everything that there is to know. Man cannot have comprehensive knowledge of all the facts. This is very dangerous for the epistemologist! Every little fact that man does not know about could potentially falsify everything that he thinks that he “knows.” But, according to Van Til, comprehensive knowledge actually does exist. Comprehensive knowledge does exist in the mind of God. Human knowledge is derivative of divine knowledge. We can have relative knowledge of the universe because God has absolute knowledge. God protects us from the possibility of the falsification of our knowledge by the facts that we are unaware of.

Finally, there is Cornelius van Til’s one-many argument. From times immemorial, philosophers have been wrestling with the problem of the one and the many (or of the general and the particular). There is a general category of trees, then there are particular trees. There is a general category of cats, and then there are particular cats. Do we call a tree “a tree” because we see it and perceive that it fits neatly into the category of trees? or, do we generalize from the many different trees and then create a category in our minds so that we can classify them? Which is logically prior, the general category or the particular instance? Which is ultimate, the one (general) or the many (particular)? Philosophers have answered this in various ways. Most of their answers have been unsatisfactory. Yet, this is quite an important question. Human knowledge rests upon compare-and-contrast analyses. Whenever we discover something new, we compare it to similar objects and contrast it against objects that differ from it. We gain an understanding of the new object through this compare-and-contrast analysis. We must have both the comparison and the contrast together in order to learn anything. Epistemology needs both the general and the particular to be equally real. Cornelius van Til supplies us with an interesting solution to the one-many problem. He suggest the equal ultimacy of the one and the many. Van Til points out that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity supplies a perfect solution. In the ontological Trinity, the one and the many are equally ultimate: God is simultaneously one and three. There are three particular persons within the one essence of the Godhead. So, it is suggested that God came to knowledge through an internal compare-and-contrast analysis of His own being: prior to the creation, God contemplated the Triune nature of His own being. [However, since God exists in eternity, outside space-time, we are speaking by way of analogy when we say that God “came to knowledge.” In reality, God’s self-analysis was not a temporal process. God eternally knows Himself through an eternal compare-and-contrast analysis of the categories of the one (essence) and the many (persons) within the ontological Trinity.] This ties in to the necessity of comprehensive knowledge argument because God could not possibly have arrived at comprehensive knowledge if He had not been simultaneously one and many. Prior to creation, God existed all alone, in a void. There was nothing outside of Himself against which He could have made any contrasting analysis. Without the possibility of a compare-and-contrast analysis, God could never have had any knowledge of Himself apart from creation. This explains the importance of the Trinitarian conception of God for Christian epistemology. God created the world with the knowledge that He had gained through His own internal compare-and-contrast analysis. His self-analysis led to His thinking in a one-many fashion, and the relative categories of the one and the many in the created world correspond to eternal categories within the mind of God, which in turn depend upon the eternal categories of the one and the many within the ontological Trinity as their ultimate foundation. Cornelius van Til follows St. Augustine in asserting that the general categories that we use to classify things correspond to ideal forms in the mind of God. There is an ideal form of tree-ness in God’s mind, and a tree is “a tree” insofar as it corresponds to that form. There is an ideal form of human-ness within the mind of God, and humans are “humans” insofar as they correspond to God’s pre-defined concept of humankind. When we classify things into categories, according to Van Til, we are simply “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” We are able to classify all of these things because God has created the categories for us. When we apply logic to the things that we see, and attempt to understand them and describe them, we are able to do so because God has already rationalized the world for us—we are not rationalizing the world for the first time.

Up to this point, I have tried to just describe Christian dogma and explain the rationale for Christian belief. I hope that I have been clear and accurate in my representation of the Christian position. As a former believer, I think that I have accurately represented the Christian position. I will, however, ignore those points of Christian doctrine where there is considerable disagreement among believers. I think that the above is a decent summary of the essence of Christian teaching. From this point on, I will be making the case against Christianity.

Christianity supplies a worldview that makes sense of the world. That is the main argument for Christianity; so, what if I can posit some other worldview that makes equal sense of everything? Wouldn’t that undermine Van Til’s contention that Christianity is a necessary presupposition? Well, I’m pretty sure I can come up with another worldview that can supply an equally coherent explanation. And I don’t have to look very far. For instance, you can look to Hindu philosophy for an alternative worldview that explains all the same things. The universe is really all an extension of the being of Bhagavan, Vishnu/God. The universe is the cosmic body of Vishnu. Everything that exists is part of God, but at the highest level—at the level of cosmic consciousness—Bhagavan is a unified whole. Each man and animal in this world is a manifestation, a little incarnation, of the deity. God is one and many. The cosmic mind of Vishnu has guided everything in the universe so that things happen in a certain way, creating a uniformity of nature. Vishnu created our bodies so that we, as little sparks of Him, might inhabit them; thus, the body is designed so that its eyes can see and its mind can think rationally. All living entities are expansions of the being of Bhagavan, containing the Paramatma (the fullness of the Godhead) within their souls. When we become enlightened, we realize that all men are really just part of the same universal being. We realize that the distinction between me and you—between the self and the other—is false. Consequently, it is in our own rational self-interest for us to not harm other people because hurting other people is actually hurting us too because there isn’t actually a difference between “us” and “them.” It is quite easy to see how Hinduism can explain all the same things that Christianity does. Christianity is not the only worldview that can be “proven” using the abductive logic of the Christian apologists. Most religions have solutions to all of these epistemological and ethical problems. Throughout history, philosophers have always discussed the same problems, and it is no surprise that religious philosophers have independently developed basically functionally isomorphic worldviews (i.e. perspectives that literally contradict each other but nevertheless lead to similar logical conclusions if they are acted upon).

Now, this little exercise in comparative religion was a mere parenthetical gloss. It was just something to get you thinking. I do not mean to propose some other religious worldview as an alternative. I simply wanted to point out that all of the arguments for Christianity are equally valid arguments for other non-Christian religions. This alone, I think, is a serious stumbling block for the educated and philosophical Christian.

As I noted above, the Christian believes that God created natural laws and that this explains the uniformity of nature. Thus, according to the Christian apologist, the uniformity of nature itself is evidence that God exists. Bertrand Russell responded to this argument thus:

“Then there is a very common argument from natural law. That was a favorite argument all through the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of Sir Isaac Newton and his cosmogony. People observed the planets going around the sun according to the law of gravitation, and they thought that God had given a behest to these planets to move in that particular fashion, and that was why they did so. That was, of course, a convenient and simple explanation that saved them the trouble of looking any further for explanations of the law of gravitation. Nowadays we explain the law of gravitation in a somewhat complicated fashion that Einstein has introduced. I do not propose to give you a lecture on the law of gravitation, as interpreted by Einstein, because that again would take some time; at any rate, you no longer have the sort of natural law that you had in the Newtonian system, where, for some reason that nobody could understand, nature behaved in a uniform fashion. We now find that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge from chance. There is, as we all know, a law that if you throw dice you will get double sixes only about once in thirty-six times, and we do not regard that as evidence that the fall of the dice is regulated by design; on the contrary, if the double sixes came every time we should think that there was design. The laws of nature are of that sort as regards a great many of them. They are statistical averages such as would emerge from the laws of chance; and that makes this whole business of natural law much less impressive than it formerly was. Quite apart from that, which represents the momentary state of science that may change tomorrow, the whole idea that natural laws imply a lawgiver is due to a confusion between natural and human laws. Human laws are behests commanding you to behave a certain way, in which you may choose to behave, or you may choose not to behave; but natural laws are a description of how things do in fact behave, and being a mere description of what they in fact do, you cannot argue that there must be somebody who told them to do that, because even supposing that there were, you are then faced with the question ‘Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others?’ If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others—the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it—if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary. You really have a law outside and anterior to the divine edicts, and God does not serve your purpose, because he is not the ultimate lawgiver. In short, this whole argument about natural law no longer has anything like the strength that it used to have.”—Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian)

The presuppositionalist would likely respond to Bertrand Russell’s argument by quoting Cornelius van Til:

“On the assumption of the natural man [that is, the non-believer] logic is a timeless, impersonal principle, and facts are controlled by chance. It is by means of universal timeless principles of logic that the natural man must, on his assumptions, seek to make intelligible assertions about the world of reality or chance. But this cannot be done without falling into self-contradiction. About chance no manner of assertion can be made. In its very idea it is the irrational. And how are rational assertions to be made about the irrational? If they are to be made, then it must be because the irrational is itself wholly reduced to the rational. That is to say, if the natural man is to make any intelligible assertions about the world of ‘reality’ or ‘fact’ which, according to him, is what it is for no rational reason at all, then he must make the virtual claim of rationalizing the irrational.”—Cornelius van Til (The Defense of the Faith, Chapter 7, Section 1)

Indeed, the presuppositionalists have a point; but the regularity upon which probability rests can be explained without the presupposition of God. As Russell hinted, the notion of God really just sidesteps the question of the uniformity of nature and the laws of nature. Why did God create those laws? “Because He wanted to create the best possible world for us.” Why did He want to do that? “Because He loves us.” Why does He love us? “Because the essence of God is love. His nature dictates that He loves us.” But now the Christian has posited some law even further back than the laws of nature. The atheist must ask: If the laws of nature need some explanation apart from the fact that they just are, then the laws of God’s nature need an explanation too. If God’s nature can be posited as just existing and being what it is because it is so, then why can’t we stop at the existence of the laws of nature and say that the universe just is what it is and functions the way it does because it does. The Christian apologist has only pushed the inevitable question a little further back.

What Russell was getting at with his argument is that, according to the discoveries of the quantum physicists, the notions of the “uniformity of nature” and “laws of nature” that come to us from Newtonian physics are basically mistaken. The appearance of the laws of nature is really just an emergent phenomenon—spontaneous order that emerges from the apparently random interactions of subatomic particles. The probability is such that a pattern develops and it appears that there is a uniformity of nature. Russell says that the laws of nature do not dictate the way the universe must work. On the contrary, the laws of nature merely describe how the universe works. The laws of physics are not prescriptive; they are descriptive. This is, at least partially, a quibble over semantics. At the macroscopic level, there does appear to be a uniformity of nature. As to the question of the one and the many, we say that the uniformity that emerges plays out so as to lead to the apparent uniformity of categories. The universals are emergent phenomena that spontaneously arise from the similarities that emerge in the uniformity of nature through chance. We see the particular similarities and then generalize to the category, not because we are rationalizing the irrational, but because the similarities have actually emerged spontaneously. The similarities that do exist are the basis for our classifying things into general categories, placing like with like.

Darwin's idea of natural selection can give us some insight into physics. At the most basic level, the quantum/subatomic level, things do appear to be more random and chaotic. What seems likely to be the case is that a sort of natural selection is at work in physics. In biology, natural selection weeds out forms that are not suited for survival, allowing those that are more suited for survival to reproduce and thrive. This leads to the illusion of design. Physics appears to have something analogous to this. Stable particles survive longer, whereas unstable ones fade into non-existence. Thus, certain stable forms of matter and energy tend to be more dominant in our universe. The more stable forms just so happen to interact with each other in specific ways that we have come to recognize, giving the illusion of design. The uniformity of nature, then, is not the product of intelligent design but the result of natural selection.

In connection with the above argument about the uniformity of nature, the presuppositionalists have suggested that the problem of induction is an insurmountable obstacle for the non-believer. We observe things happening over and over again, then we use inductive reasoning to infer that there is a general rule or natural law that governs this phenomenon. This is the basis of Newtonian physics. Moreover, the presuppositionalist contends, that this is the basis of science in general. Yet, inductive reasoning is always fallacious—it is a non sequitur: it does not follow from the fact that such-and-such has been observed to repeatedly happen in the past that such-and-such will always happen the same way in the future. The Christian, it is argued, has reason to believe in the uniformity of nature, not upon inductive reasoning but upon abductive reasoning. Consequently, it is only the Christian worldview that can supply a rational justification for a belief in the uniformity of nature. The non-believing scientists, therefore, are simply operating on “borrowed capital” from the Christian worldview.

The appropriate response to this argument comes from Karl Popper. Popper agrees with the presuppositionalists’ assertion that inductive reasoning is fallacious:

“I hold with Hume that there simply is no such logical entity as an inductive inference; or, that all so-called inductive inferences are logically invalid…. I agree with Hume’s opinion that induction is invalid and in no sense justified. Consequently neither Hume nor I can accept the traditional formulations which uncritically ask for the justification of induction; such a request is uncritical because it is blind to the possibility that induction is invalid in every sense, and therefore unjustifiable.”—Karl Popper (The Problem of Induction)

But Popper contends that human knowledge, and scientific knowledge in particular, is not actually based upon inductive reasoning. In actuality, human being are finite and fallible animals who can only ever have conjectural knowledge. We can never have absolute knowledge. The presuppositionalists’ argument from the necessity of comprehensive knowledge is just wishful thinking. We would really like to have undoubtedly certain knowledge, but no such thing is possible. As fallible animals, we do not base our knowledge upon inductive reasoning, as David Hume falsely taught. Our knowledge is actually conjectural knowledge that derives from a process of trial-and-error. Popper writes:

“I hold that neither animals nor men use any procedure like induction, or any argument based on the repetition of instances. The belief that we use induction is simply a mistake. It is a kind of optical illusion.

“What we do use is a method of trial and the examination of error; however misleadingly this method may look like induction, its logical structure, if we examine it closely, totally differs from that of induction. Moreover, it is a method which does not give rise to any of the difficulties connected with the problem of induction.

“Thus it is not because induction can manage without justification that I am opposed to the traditional problem; on the contrary, it would urgently need justification. But the need cannot be satisfied. Induction simply does not exist, and the opposite view is a straightforward mistake.

“There are many ways to present my own non-inductivist point of view. Perhaps the simplest is this. I will try to show that the whole apparatus of induction becomes unnecessary once we admit the general fallibility of human knowledge or, as I like to call it, the conjectural character of human knowledge.

“Let me point this out first for the best kind of human knowledge we have; that is, for scientific knowledge. I assert that scientific knowledge is essentially conjectural or hypothetical.”—Karl Popper (The Problem of Induction)

In the very nature of the case, mankind can have no absolute certainty. There is no such thing as absolutely certain knowledge for man. There cannot be any such thing. Science is based on this epistemological method of trial and error. Scientific knowledge is not inductive. Scientific knowledge is purely deductive: science observes the world around us and describes the phenomena that it observes. The scientist gets his facts from deductive reasoning, through observation. He formulates hypotheses to explain these phenomena with abductive reasoning, through conjecture. After formulating his hypothesis, the scientist puts it to the test—he attempts to falsify his hypothesis. As the scientific community continually tries to falsify the hypothesis, the hypothesis will either stand up to the test or it will be proven wrong. Popper writes:

“This leads us to the pragmatic problems of induction which to start with, we might formulate thus:
(1) Upon which theory should we rely for practical action, from a rational point of view?
(2) Which theory should we prefer for practical action, from a rational point of view?
"My answer to (1) is: from a rational point of view, we should not ‘rely’ on any theory, for no theory has been shown to be true, or can be shown to be true (or ‘reliable’).
“My answer to (2) is: we should prefer the best tested theory as a basis for action.

"In other words, there is no ‘absolute reliance’; but since we have to choose, it will be ‘rational’ to choose the best tested theory. This will be ‘rational’ in the most obvious sense of the word known to me: the best tested theory is the one which, in the light of our critical discussion, appears to be the best so far; and I do not know of anything more ‘rational’ than a well-conducted critical discussion….

“Now I do not particularly want to deny (or, for that matter, assert) that, in choosing the best tested theory as a basis for action, we ‘rely’ on it, in some sense of the word. It may therefore even be described as the most ‘reliable’ theory available, in some sense of this term. Yet this is not to say that it is ‘reliable’. It is ‘unreliable’ at least in the sense that we shall always do well, even in practical action, to foresee the possibility that something may go wrong with it and with our expectations.”—Karl Popper (The Problem of Induction)

The scientific epistemological method put forth by Karl Popper is known as critical rationalism. This epistemology is fundamentally different from both the foundationalist/rationalist approach of Descartes and the scientism of the empiricists. The Christian, of course, may have a hard time coming to accept such a perspective. Critical rationalism brings human fallibility to the forefront. It points out that we do not know—indeed, cannot possibly know—as much as we would like to know. There is no comprehensive knowledge anywhere, so all knowledge is potentially falsifiable. Thus, the dogmatic certainty of the presuppositionalist is not shared by critical rationalists.

I will also make the quick observation that the presuppositionalists have not evaded the problem of induction as much as they would like to think. The presuppositionalists circumvent the problem of induction by positing God as Absolute Rationality and human logic as derivative of divine logic. The presuppositionalists notice the inherently flawed and fallacious circular fallacy at the heart of any argument for the validity of reason. Logic cannot be logically proven; because you must first presuppose the validity of logic before you can use logic to justify logic. The reliability of our sense perceptions can only be taken for granted in a circular way; for no observation can prove the validity of our faculties of observation. Moving the problem back and pointing to God as a solution doesn’t really solve the problem. The circular fallacy is just moved to a different place. We must presuppose the existence of God in order to prove His existence. We can no longer prove Christianity. We can only presuppose it. As far as the presuppositionalist is concerned, any use of logic presupposes the truth of the Christian position. Consequently, any logical proof for the existence of God would imply circular reasoning since logic presupposes the existence of God from the outset.

To address the evolutionary argument against naturalism requires a little bit of a defense of the theory of evolution. Americans can hardly be blamed for largely rejecting Darwin’s theory. American schools have never adequately taught evolutionary theory in science classes and have consistently failed to present the evidence when they have taught it. American education is dogmatic: they tell you what they want you to answer and then they quiz you to see if you give the answer that they’ve rehearsed with you. For the most part, they give you no reason to believe the things that they teach you. You are supposed to accept it solely upon the authority of the teacher that tells you it is so. Yet, there is quite a bit of evidence to support Darwin’s hypothesis. The Stated Clearly channel on YouTube has several good videos on the evidence for evolution. One of the videos on that channel lays out the evidence for the claim that cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc.) are actually descended from a four-legged land animal. Whales, unlike other sea creatures, have lungs and nostrils, their fins have bone structures that are similar to those of land mammals; they give live birth as land mammals do (which is abnormal for aquatic animals), and they have the remnants of vestigial legs. Whales do not have legs, but within their bodies they do have shrunken hip, thigh, and shin bones. These bones are mostly useless for the whale today. The video goes on to examine evidence from embryology, archeology (the fossil record), and genetics; and all of these fields present substantiating evidence to support the hypothesis that whales evolved from land mammals.

There is also evidence from the selective breeding of domesticated animals. The Russian geneticist Dimitri Belyaev, by selectively breeding foxes, was able to produce a breed that was similar to border collies in both fur pattern and mannerism. According to Richard Dawkins,

“Wild foxes are tricky to handle, and Belyaev set out deliberately to breed for tameness….

“After a mere six generations of this selective breeding for tameness, the foxes had changed so much that the experimenters felt obliged to name a new category, the ‘domesticated elite’ class, which were ‘eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs.’ At the beginning of the experiment, none of the foxes were in the elite class. After ten generations of breeding for tameness, 18 per cent were ‘elite’; after twenty generations, 35 per cent; and after thirty to thirty-five generations, ‘domesticated elite’ individuals constituted between 70 and 80 per cent of the experimental population.

“Such results are perhaps not too surprising, except for the astonishing magnitude and speed of the effect. Thirty-five generations would pass unnoticed on the geological timescale. Even more interesting, however, were the unexpected side-effects of the selective breeding for tameness. These were truly fascinating and genuinely unforeseen. Darwin, the dog-lover, would have been entranced. The tame foxes not only behaved like domestic dogs, they looked like them. They lost their foxy pelage and became piebald black and white, like Welsh collies. Their foxy prick ears were replaced by doggy floppy ears. Their tails turned up at the end like a dog’s, rather than down like a fox’s brush. The females came on heat every six months like a bitch, instead of every year like a vixen. According to Belyaev, they even sounded like dogs.”—Richard Dawkins (The Greatest Show on Earth, Chapter 3)

If all of that variation and evolution can be witnessed in the course of one human lifetime, imagine what we might see over the course of thousands (or even millions) of years. We might see the terrier and the collie descend from a common ancestor. Of course, Belyaev was selectively breeding foxes by design. Nature, on the other hand, has her own process of selection. Natural selection occurs, without design, when animals that are better adapted for survival are “selected” by surviving and reproducing, while animals that are not well-adapted die off and do not get the opportunity to reproduce. The moths with camouflage survive and reproduce, passing that trait on to their offspring, whereas the moths that “stick out like a sore thumb” are eaten by predators and eventually go extinct.

The question raised by the Christian apologist is: “Why would evolution lead to accurate perceptions of reality?” The answer, I think, is one that was summarized by Ludwig von Mises in the second chapter of his book Human Action. Natural selection would have a tendency to allow those beings with more accurate perceptions to survive and reproduce. And this argument is related to the collapse of the fact/value dichotomy, of which Hilary Putnam and Sam Harris have been the most prominent proponents. We are inclined to value facts because they are useful to us. They help us to achieve our goals. The recognition of the fact that the burner on the stove is hot, helps to inform me of how I can best achieve my goal of achieving/maintaining my own happiness and comfort. If I touch the stove and burn myself out of ignorance, that will bring me harm and foil my goal of maintaining my own comfort and happiness. If a pre-human specimen had a mind that was structured in such a way that its thoughts did not correspond to reality, that specimen would act in a way that would not be conducive to the preservation of its own life and the propagation of its species. A specimen that did not realize the reality of gravity would constantly be falling off of cliffs and trying to fly, foiling any chance it might have of survival, thereby keeping itself from having the opportunity to reproduce. Natural selection would preserve those species whose perceptions and cognitive faculties had the greatest correspondence to reality, while weeding out those specimens that failed to understand the facts about the world around them. The beings with the most rational minds and the most accurate perceptions would survive. If evolution is true, we should expect to see an animal like man develop a rational and discerning mind through natural selection over the course of millions of generations.

This leads us into the collapse of the fact/value dichotomy, propagated by Hilary Putnam and Sam Harris. And this will be our response to the argument from universal morality. As I have just said above, we value facts because they are useful to us. They help us achieve our goals. We value our own happiness, peace, and comfort. The recognition of the fact that the fire is hot helps to inform me of the best way to go about preserving my own comfort and happiness. If I put my hand in the fire because I do not know that it will hurt me, then my own ignorance will be the cause of the conduct that foils my own plan of maintaining my comfort and happiness. Facts have an inherent value because of their utility. They help us achieve our goals. Our purpose or goal is determined by our own human nature. It is human nature that dictates that each man will want to achieve and preserve his own happiness and comfort. The maintenance of my comfort and happiness, the prevention of painful and unpleasant experiences, is my ultimate good or ultimate value as a human being; and this ultimate value is not arbitrarily determined by me—it is dictated to me by human nature, which I share with every other human being on this planet. [There may be an anomaly here and there, just as C. S. Lewis noted that a few rare individuals do lack moral sentiments and empathy. These rare instances may be looked at as “the exceptions that prove the rule.” And such exceptions are to be expected upon naturalistic evolutionary assumptions.] As a result of our shared human nature, all men share the same ultimate goal. We all share moral sentiments and have empathy because we share a common human nature. It is natural for us to empathize with one another because we are all human. We have some shared values and common goals that we are all in agreement on. The only thing, therefore, that is necessary in order for us to devise a universal and objective code of ethics is for us to gather up all the facts and devise a code of conduct that is most conducive to the achievement and maintenance of our common goals. We simply have to devise a code of conduct that is rooted in the core values of man that are inherent in human nature itself.

A universal natural law of morality does not need a divine explanation. It can be explained as the result of evolutionary processes. Natural selection has led to the preservation of those values that are most conducive to the preservation of the human species. This process of natural selection has caused a general human nature to emerge, creating a species with shared values, as those individuals that lacked these values fell into extinction.

The presuppositionalist is likely to respond: “Why should I value the happiness and comfort of others?” Well, because empathy is part of human nature. Humans, as humans, naturally value the happiness and comfort of others. Empathy is part of human nature that has proven necessary for human survival. Furthermore, empathy causes us to feel guilt. If I harm someone else, then I will feel guilty. That guilt will be an obstacle to the maintenance of my own happiness. We value the happiness of ourselves and we value community—these values are natural to us as humans. These values are determined by human nature and are inescapable for us. Any code of conduct is bound to be specific to the particular species about which we are speaking. Is the wolf being unethical when it kills its prey? Is the cicada killer wasp being unethical when it stings the cicada, thereby paralyzing it, and uses it as a host in which to lay its eggs? A specimen that cannot possibly survive without practicing cannibalism cannot be viewed as acting unethically when it kills other members of its own species. And if that species is such that it lacks “moral sentiments” and empathy altogether, then there can be absolutely no basis for condemning the specimen as unethical. What is right for a dog is not the same as what is right for a man. What is right for man would not necessarily be right for an extraterrestrial species. This observation brings into question the whole notion of God as a source for human ethical standards. If human ethics is relative to humankind as humans, and differs from any code of conduct that might apply to other animal species, then wouldn’t a different standard have to apply to God? Christians have often said that we ought not to judge God by human standards; yet if God’s nature is the basis of human standards, then we have every right to judge God according to our standards. We have every right to object to God allowing the holocaust to happen, allowing Hiroshima to happen, and we have every reason to object to those inhumane and cruel “ethical precepts” in the Bible that seem to be at odds with all ordinary human morality. I have every right to object to Deuteronomy 22:28-29, which mandates that a rape victim must marry her attacker, after the rapist buys her from her father. I have every right to object to Deuteronomy 21:18-22, which mandates that rebellious and disobedient children must be publicly executed. I have every right to object to all of these terrible mandates that are ascribed to God. And, supposing that one might argue that these mandates are not clearly understood or are not genuinely from God, I have every right to object to the fact that God has not come down from heaven in our times and revealed the truth to us once and for all. I have every right to object to the fact that God has not revealed Himself in every place and at every time in order to prevent religious zealots from doing terribly unethical things in His name.

If the theory of evolution is true, then Christianity cannot possibly be true. Christianity explains death as being the result of sin. The first man, Adam, sinned. Consequently, death came into the world as a consequence of this original sin. The basic redemptive scheme of Christianity hinges upon the assumption that death is a consequence of sin. (Cf. Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21) If evolution is true, and man evolved from a process of natural selection, then millions of species died off prior to the origin of mankind—death preceded the original sin. If death preceded the original sin, then the unrighteousness of the first man, Adam, cannot be viewed as the cause of death and corruption. It follows from this, that if the unrighteousness of Adam does not actually account for the origin of death, then the righteousness of the second man, Christ, cannot possibly counteract the death-causing effects of original sin and lead to the abolition of death. The faulty conception of the origin of species in the Book of Genesis, and the faulty conception of the origin of death, which is based upon it, is undermined by the new evidence that has been produced by Darwin and modern science.

This faulty conception, derived from the Book of Genesis, leads to erroneous beliefs about a number of facts. Since they lead to erroneous beliefs about facts, they also lead to erroneous beliefs in the field of ethics. Value is not independent of facts, as I have argued above. An example of such a mistaken value-judgment, caused by a misunderstanding of facts on the part of Christians, is their condemnation of homosexuality, a position that seems less and less tenable as time passes. Binary gender categories have been forced upon us by an archaic Platonist worldview. Christianity and Western philosophy have historically presupposed a fixed set of forms. Plato taught the existence of universal forms, which exist in the world of ideals, and to which particular things in this world correspond. This was his solution to the one-many problem. The particular things that we see in this world are classified according to a category that corresponds with an ideal form that exists somewhere outside of this world. St. Augustine argued that the world of ideals is actually in the mind of God. The ideal forms, which form the basis of our categories for classifying things, exist in the mind of God. And in the Book of Genesis, in the Bible, it is said that God created everything “according to their kind.” (Cf. Genesis 1:11) Christianity was basically a fusion of Neo-Platonism and Judaism, so the notion of Platonic forms and the biblical notion of creation according to kind combined to create a rigid epistemological dogma. There are dogs, then there are cats. There are males, then there are females. There cannot be anything in between. Everything must fit into one category or the other. Yet, this view has been disproven by modern science. We know that the “kinds” of species are not fixed forms. Species can, and various species have, transitioned into other distinct species. Just as the categories of species are not actually fixed and permanent, so too gender categories are not as fixed as most people think. We evolved from various species that were not sexually reproducing—at some point, in ancient times, some ancestors of humankind were genderless, neither male nor female. The genetic information that codes for male and female body types is actually present in the DNA of all humans, both male and female. This is demonstrated by atavisms and “abnormalities” like hermaphroditism, where the physiology of a person does not develop so as to fit into either of the typical binary gender categories. There are other instances where individuals are assigned one gender according to their chromosomes, yet they naturally develop physiologically into the opposite gender. About one out of every one hundred infants is born with genitalia that “differs from standard male or female.”(isna.org) Additionally, there are a multitude of different types of hermaphroditism or intersexuality that are not apparent at birth but become noticeable as the child reaches puberty. Gender identity and sexuality are influenced by physiology, but they are not determined by it. Psychology, chemistry, and culture play a crucial role in the formation of gender identity and sexuality. Then there is the phenomenon of transgenderism, when a person consciously identifies with the opposite gender. [Curiously, individuals who develop into the opposite gender from that assigned by their chromosomes do not usually develop transgender dysphoria; they are generally able to identify with their physiological gender and live normal lives.] The question of homosexuality isn’t so “black and white.” What about hermaphrodites and transgender individuals? Christianity has no place for them. And the whole issue raised here about ideal forms, kinds, and gender makes it really difficult to accept the historical Christian position on homosexuality.

Christianity does not advocate racism. On the contrary, St. Paul’s letters seem to be a perfect negation of racism. However, I think that Plato’s notion of fixed forms or ideals, which is shared with Christianity in the Judaic concept of creation according to kind, is a necessary assumption for anyone holding to a racist position. If races are not rigid categories fixed by universal forms, then racism has no legs to stand on. If the rigid distinction between Africans and Europeans is illusory and fictitious, then any notion of the superiority of one race over another is absolute nonsense.

In the areas of epistemology and ethics, it does not seem to me that God is a necessary presupposition. If some alternative explanation can be supplied, then the abductive arguments for God’s existence are no longer as weighty as they originally appeared. Furthermore, the hypothesis of God as an explanation for epistemology and ethics does not seem to be any better than the naturalistic and evolutionary explanations supplied above. The theologian says that God is what He is because of His nature or essence. The persons of the Trinity are what they are because they share the same Divine nature. God’s nature determines what He is. The laws of logic and ethics ultimately derive from God’s nature. The universe is rational because God is rational; and God is rational because His nature is rational. But if the nature of God can be considered a sufficient explanation for rationality, then why can’t the nature of the universe itself be considered as a sufficient explanation? We can never know why God is what He is: He just is that way (or so the theologians tell us). But why can’t we just say that nature itself is what it is and let that be the end of it? Why must we search for a more ultimate explanation? Why must we posit the existence of some metaphysical entity as an explanation? The theologian says that human ethics are derivative of divine standards that naturally flow from God’s nature, but why can’t we just say that human ethics naturally follows from human nature without the presupposition of some basis outside of human nature?

If the universe needs an explanation, then why doesn’t God need an explanation? If the laws of physics need an explanation apart from the natural world, then don’t the laws of God’s divine nature need some explanation too? If we cannot assume that the universe just exists—if existence must have some explanation beyond itself—, then how can we just assume the existence of God without demanding an explanation back of God?

There is considerable evidence that the entire framework of space-time came into being with the universe. If this is the case, then the question of origin/beginning/creation is a misunderstanding that stems from our limited perspective. The law of causality assumes a space-time framework. If time is itself an epiphenomenon of matter that didn’t exist “prior to” the creation of the universe, then we cannot look for a “cause” of the universe outside of time itself. There simply is no “before” the beginning. There is no time “prior to” the Big Bang. If the Big Bang is conceived as a creation event, then the concept of God seems to be largely meaningless. If God does exist, then He exists in the eternity beyond space-time. Morality presupposes a scheme of causality within the framework of space and time. Actions within space-time are good or bad because of a spatiotemporal scheme of cause-and-effect. It is unethical for me to punch someone in the face because such an action has the negative effect of causing pain for the person that I have punched. God, existing beyond space-time, cannot possibly be an “ethical” being in the human sense of the term. Logic is also based on spatiotemporal categories. Two objects cannot occupy the same place at once, so we have a natural version of the law of non-contradiction, but this would not be the case in a non-spatiotemporal world. Our logic and morality are relative to humankind as it exists within a spatiotemporal framework. If some sentient being exists beyond the physical world, beyond the ordinary framework of space-time, then he can only exist in a realm of paraconsistent logic, so that he might simultaneously exist and not exist. To speak of such a being as either “good” or “evil” would be meaningless. The possibility of some dialetheistic (paraconsistent) being in some other realm of reality is quite interesting, but it is irrelevant and has no practical importance for mankind. These are interesting possibilities about which metaphysicians might speculate, but they are things about which we cannot possibly know. How could our system of logic possibly make valid inferences about the real existence of a realm where a self-contradictory logic is valid? It is not something that the human mind can even grasp; and if we could have grasped it, we probably wouldn’t have been able to survive in this world.

The notion that the concept of God is non-falsifiable is utter humbug. In fact, I think it has been falsified. Just because something is not deductively falsifiable does not mean that it is not tautologically falsifiable. God, as defined by religions and metaphysicians, cannot possibly exist. God—as a creator and ultimate cause, existing beyond space-time, and serving as the source of human logic and human moral codes—is a meaningless concept. As I have just argued, logic and morality presuppose a spatiotemporal framework. No entity that exists outside of that framework could possibly serve as the basis for any system of logic and morality that would make sense within that spatiotemporal framework. The impossibility of the existence of God seems to be the logical conclusion.