Despite what he might think, Jim Gardner has a long way to go before he understands presuppositional apologetics. Although I think he is making important strides in grappling with what is being argued, it is clearly evident that he is nowhere near to finding the source of that curious odor under his bed.^[1] While I certainly appreciate the kind words he had to say about me and our recent conversation, I have to expose a fundamental confusion he apparently struggles under.

Gardner admits that he does not understand how I can draw an inference from what science explains about nature to not only the existence of God but also that the proof of his existence is contained in Scripture.^[2] I can explain that for him very succinctly:

“I don’t.”

Despite how clearly I had said it, for some reason it has not yet sunk in. As I had said in that conversation, so will I state very clearly again: the truth of God and his word is a presupposition we reason from, not a conclusion we reason to. Gardner simply must accept what is being argued if he wants to interact with it rationally and honestly. When he describes his opponent’s position in a way that is unrecognizable to his opponent, that is a clear indication that he has not understood the position; and he is not going to understand the position until he is prepared to accept what his opponent is so clearly stating, which is again:

• The truth of God and his word is a presupposition we reason from, not a conclusion we reason to.

All attempts by Gardner and Alex Botten to treat that as if it is a conclusion instead of a presupposition are doomed as straw man failures, insofar as they are arguing against a position that is different from or weaker than the one their opponent actually holds. A person cannot be expected to defend a position they do not hold. What more can one do beyond what I have done here, which is, after digesting Gardner’s 2,000-word post, to simply respond with a two-word rebuttal.

Gardner demonstrates how poorly he understands presuppositional apologetics when he says things like, “Presuppositional apologetics … [says] that everything which stems from God—including Christianity and the Bible—is a statement about the real world but not a statement about God.”^[3] Presuppositionalism is Reformed theology applied to the enterprise of apologetics, and one of the most often cited passages of Scripture in that enterprise is Romans 1:18–21:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts were darkened.

In case Gardner has missed it, verse 20 directly contradicts his statement—as does a host of other passages (e.g., Psa 19:1–3). In Reformed theology there are two sources of revelation: general revelation (nature) and special revelation (Scripture); it all speaks to the nature and character of God. One must bear in mind, however, that Scripture is ultimate and authoritative, such that general revelation is subordinate to special revelation. As it says in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (1.1),^[4]

The Holy Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule for saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence give such clear testimony to the goodness, wisdom and power of God that they leave people without excuse, yet they are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and his will that is necessary for salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord to reveal himself at various times and in different ways, and to declare his will to his church. To ensure the preservation and propagation of the truth, and to establish and support the church against human corruption, the malice of Satan, and the world, he committed his complete revelation to writing. The Holy Scriptures are therefore absolutely indispensable, for God’s former ways of revealing his will to his people have now ceased.

But how poorly he understands presuppositional apologetics is made all the more clear when he portrayed it as being some kind of cosmological argument. He seems to think the argument goes something like this: the universe cannot come from nothing so it must have come from Something, and atheists willfully deny that the nature and character of that Something constitutes proof of God; moreover, atheists are unable to account for their own existence without implicitly acknowledging that Something (which is somehow God).^[5] I have a one-word response to that:

“Lolwut?”

I have no idea where Gardner got this from. Neither Sye nor Dustin have ever argued anything even remotely similar to this, nor can anything like that be found in the writings of Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, Gordon Clark, Michael Butler, Vincent Cheung, John Frame, K. Scott Oliphint and so forth—all of them presuppositionalists of one camp or another (q.v. Van Tilian vs. Clarkian presuppositionalism). Gardner so poorly understands what is being argued that we can safely say that he does not understand it at all, much less poorly. His attempt at describing the presuppositional argument is utterly unrecognizable. It might be what a person would get if he threw William Lane Craig’s kalam cosmological argument and presuppositionalist jargon into a blender and hit purée—an epic mess that nobody would recognize. It is not what a presuppositionalist argues, it is not what an evidentialist argues, it is not what Craig would argue, it is not what an atheist would argue; literally nobody would recognize that reconstruction Gardner attempted.

I think Gardner needs to first understand what he is objecting to before he attempts objecting to it. He might detect a curious odor, but he has no idea where it is coming from, much less has he determined that it is a stray sport sock or plucked it out to give it a wash.

~ * ~

There is one thing I would like to know. Gardner said quite frankly, “There is no God to deny or accept.”^[6] That is a very interesting truth claim, and I would really like to see the argument which produces it. I challenge Gardner to provide the premises which lead to that conclusion.

Gardner also said that he struggles to understand how people “who are so clearly capable of researching and understanding all of this for themselves still somehow manage to come to such obviously flawed assumptions about the validity [or even] the intellectual honesty of their own position.”^[7] That is another interesting truth claim, that my presupposition is invalid and intellectually dishonest. Is Gardner up to the challenge of providing the premises which lead to that conclusion?

1. ^[1] Jim Gardner, “I think Jim is getting closer to becoming a Christian,” How Good Is That? [blog] (2011, October 30). ↩
2. ^[2] Gardner, para. 4. ↩
3. ^[3] Ibid., para. 8. ↩
4. ^[4] Andrew Kerkham, 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, 2nd edition (2001). ↩
5. ^[5] Gardner, op cit., para. 11. ↩
6. ^[6] Ibid., para. 6. ↩
7. ^[7] Ibid., para. 7. ↩

“Harold Camping, the Family Radio evangelist who wrongly predicted doomsday back in May, says the real end of the world is now Oct. 21,” Elizabeth Flock reports for the Washington Post.^[1]

Apparently next Friday, “at this point, looks like it will be the final end of everything,” Camping prophesies.

“Those who weren’t saved on May 21, Camping says, ‘will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011’,” Flock writes.

“But Camping isn’t making any big promises this time. ‘I really am beginning to think as I restudied these matters that there’s going to be no big display of any kind’, he said in an audio address after suffering a stroke in June. ‘The end is going to come very, very quietly’.”

1. ^[1] Elizabeth Flock, “Harold Camping says the end of the world is definitely Oct. 21,” Washington Post (2011, October 14). ↩

—because if there was a prize, Botten would have to award it to me. He recently wrote a surreal account of our exchange from the other day which he closed with the following offer: “There is a prize for anyone who can spot the ‘parting gratuitous invective’,”^[1] referring to my accusation. I am happy to claim that non-existent prize:

Ryft, I’m through with you as well. You’re just as bad as Alan for avoiding direct questions.^[2]

I suppose Botten could respond by saying that was not an insult but a compliment; however, given the record of his opinion of Rhology (who he calls Alan), I think he would find it rather difficult making that stick.

Now I called this recent post of his surreal but perhaps I can add ironic; it was surreal insofar as it spun what actually happened in complete reverse, yet it was also ironic in that his post was accusing me of spinning things around. Readers can draw their own conclusion, of course, but have a look at what he said.

Indeed I believe that the earth is very old and that Genesis is not wrong in its account of creation, and indeed this so mystified Botten that he asked me numerous times and in various ways how this could be—but at no time did I blitz him with requests to prove me wrong. That is an utter reversal of what happened, which can be easily verified by anyone particularly because I provided extensive citations. He said that the earth being old directly contradicts what Genesis says about creation, which he equated with the young-earth interpretation. What I hammered him with were requests to prove himself right; that is to say, I expected him to support his claim. The earth being old contradicts the Bible only if the young-earth interpretation is right, and I was not about to let him beg that question. (Moreover, how could I demand that he prove me wrong when I did not make any claims about what Genesis says?)

He says he did point out “the biblical reasons for thinking that [Genesis] preaches a young-earth creation.”^[3] The only problem is that he actually did not. All he did was assert the young-earth interpretation—that Genesis recounts God bringing the world into material existence, including Adam, and that calculating the genealogies tells us this was not more than 10,000 years ago—but stating a case is not the same thing as making a case. For some reason Botten seems to think that the exegetical burden of proof is met by simply asserting the interpretation.

The earth being old contradicts the Bible only if the young-earth interpretation is right. So if he wants to make that claim—that the earth being old contradicts the Bible (and therefore the Bible is wrong)—then he will need to support that claim without begging the very question.

Or hurl gratuitous invective from the comfort of Reverse World.

(Incidentally, I have no idea why he had trouble commenting on that post; certainly others had no difficulty commenting there.)

1. ^[1] Alex Botten, “Christian blogger Ryft gets spinning,” An Atheist Viewpoint (2011, October 14), para. 7. ↩
2. ^[2] Alex Botten, “A question for young earth creationists,” An Atheist Viewpoint (2011, October 11, comments section, 21:11; emphasis mine). ↩
3. ^[3] op. cit., “Christian blogger Ryft gets spinning,” para. 7. ↩

An email I received this morning from a source I do not have permission to reveal:

I received the following email this morning from Rhology:

12 October 2011

David,

Well, you made Alex look like a fool. Not hard, but still.  :-)

Grace and peace,

Rhology

Rhology,

Is it that I made Alex Botten look like a fool, or rather that Botten made himself look like a fool? I think if one reflects a moment on that exchange we had, one would have to admit that I actually did very little, and thus deserve very little credit for how he appeared. He simply made two very bold claims which, frankly, I was interested in seeing him support. I mean, is that not what atheists routinely demand of those who make claims? But atheists are fatally allergic to the burden of proof; the moment it becomes clear that they cannot escape shouldering it the conversation is over, and not without gratuitous invective—a pattern to which Botten was apparently only too willing to contribute.

Let us recapitulate what those two interesting claims of his were.

First, he claimed that if young-earth creationism is false, then one must concede that the world was not created at all. This claim was found in the question that he put to those who think the universe and Earth were created in a week 6,000 years ago (emphasis mine): “Why, when he knew it would cause people to believe that the universe was not created (so leading people away from him), would your God make things look older than they are?”^[1] In other words, if people discover that the world is far more than 6,000 years old, then that will cause them to believe that it was not created. And that of course is not only a brutal non-sequitur fallacy (i.e., the latter does not follow from the former) but also defies current and historical reality, wherein there are and were people who accept both creation and a very old earth. The fact of the matter is, Botten made a blind leap that was simply contrary to reason, which I wanted to expose by having him attempt supporting that claim.

Second, he also claimed that “one cannot square biblical creationism with an old earth,” ^[2] wherein “biblical creationism” is equated with the young-earth view,^[3] such that positing an old earth view “directly contradicts the Bible.” ^[4] If I understood his point here correctly, then he was trying to support his original non-sequitur; that is, since the world being old directly contradicts what Scripture says about creation, given the young-earth interpretation, discovering its great age would cause people to believe that it was not created. That is still a brutal non-sequitur but the response I opted for was to have him support that claim, which I pursued by forcing him to provide the exegesis for the young-earth interpretation. In other words, I was not going to permit that as a given, because it would beg the very question. Obviously I disagree that the earth being old directly contradicts the Bible so I insisted that he shoulder his burden of proof.

Well, of course we cannot have that so with a parting gratuitous invective he disabled the commenting feature on the article.^[5] Thus we have Botten losing his cool—although not a Jim Gardner meltdown—because some Christian had the audacity to call him out on his claims and require that he support them, exhibiting that allergic reaction I mentioned and perhaps nowhere more clearly than by his transparent attempt at shifting the burden on to me.^[6]

So I cannot really take credit for what Botten did mostly by himself.

1. ^[1] Alex Botten, “A question for young earth creationists,” An Atheist Viewpoint (2011, October 11), para. 2. ↩
2. ^[2] Ibid., comments section, 11 Oct. 2011, 14:43. ↩
3. ^[3] Ibid., 18:12. ↩
4. ^[4] Ibid., 18:49. ↩
5. ^[5] Although I noticed this afternoon that he reenabled it at some point today. ↩
6. ^[6] “Do you claim that the Bible doesn’t give genealogies from Adam onwards, and that it doesn’t claim the Earth was created in a literal six day period, with Adam created on the sixth day?” (Ibid., 18:59); “Do you claim that the genealogies and the creation account are incorrect? If not, how can you claim the Earth to be old?” (Ibid., 19:15); “Please explain to me how the Bible can be inerrant yet simultaneously wrong. Tell me what other interpretation you would draw from the creation account and the genealogies” (Ibid., 19:52); [Describes the young-earth interpretation and then asks] “How would you interpret it differently?” (Ibid., 20:10); “Are you claiming the text of Genesis doesn’t say that the Earth and all that’s in it was created in six 24-hour days? If so, please support this claim with evidence from Genesis” (Ibid., 20:34). ↩

Is it consistent, on the one hand, to hold to an evolutionary world view, and yet claim, on the other hand, that humans who are causing the extinction of other creatures are improperly interfering with the evolutionary process (e.g. natural selection, survival of the fittest) that’s been shaping the development of those creatures?

That was the question bumping around in my mind on Sunday evening after listening to an interview with Conservationist,  Dr. Samuel Turvey (pictured), concerning the extinction of the Baiji – also known as the Yangtze River Dolphin.

During my Sunday afternoon drive home a couple of days ago, I found myself inadvertently listening to a program called Earth Beat – a product of Radio Netherlands Worldwide – courtesy of ABC News Radio, Australia. During the program we learned that Dr. Turvey has spent quite a bit of time working to locate and preserve any remaining members of the species that had been in steep decline for several decades. As it turns out, he was too late.

The Earth Beat website says that Dr. Turvey describes the demise of the dolphin as “a national tragedy and an international disgrace.” [emphasis mine]

Elsewhere, in several articles citing the paper co-written by Dr. Turvey concerning the extinction of the Baiji (a paper subsequently published in the Royal Society Biology Letters journal), he is also quoted as saying, “This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet.”

Now I want you to keep in mind that the broader context of this story is an evolutionary world view. That’s critical context, given that we are dealing with the attempted conservation of a species that has arguably been eradicated by the industrialisation of the Yangtze River.

So here’s the remark that really caught my attention. Earth Beat host, Marnie Chesterton, says:

Read the rest of this entry

While in ongoing conversations I am trying to explore with Matt Oxley an intelligible conception of truth—a gentleman who claims to esteem truth so highly as to not only capitalize it but also idolize it ^[1]—he has made explicit and implicit references to a certain article of his regarding misconceptions about knowing truth. Therefore, we shall take a closer look at this article.^[2]

In the second paragraph Oxley admits that in this article he would like to talk about the nature of knowledge, that it is important to rightly define knowledge in order to understand what it actually means. So we have a very specific aim here; as a reader of his blog I expect to hear him talk about the nature of knowledge.

Thus it is quite ironic that he says nothing about it.

In that same paragraph he begins by describing how his understanding of knowledge today is entirely different from what it was when he was a believer, representing a seismic change in his psyche during his deconversion.

In the third paragraph he describes some of the things he knew as a believer and how unshakably he knew them. Except it was not unshakable because that knowledge slipped away from him when he replaced “emotional experiences and feelings” with empiricism as his epistemic criterion.

In the fourth paragraph he recounts his realization that everything he thought he knew had been built solely upon a circular basis and his realization that emotional experience was unreliable; as such “the word knowledge began to change as well.”

Four paragraphs into his article, with essentially only one left to go, and what has the reader learned about the proper nature of knowledge? Not a thing. In fact, the reader has not only learned nothing about the proper nature of knowledge but also nothing about how knowledge was defined or understood by Oxley as a believer. So let us turn now to his final paragraph and see if in those three sentences he finally gets around to talking about the nature of knowledge.

In this final fifth paragraph (disregarding the truly last paragraph, which was just a question to his ex-Christian readers) he describes knowledge as “the place where quantifiable truths meet belief” and something he deeply thirsts after, a motivation that drives him to further discovery and understanding. (And we also get an equally offhand remark offering insight into how knowledge was formerly constituted for him: “something unquestionable and divinely inspired.”)

In an article aimed at talking about the nature of knowledge, the reader is provided half of a sentence among five paragraphs, a clause which simply says “the place where quantifiable truths meet belief.” What does that even mean? Is this a romantic way of defining knowledge as justified true belief? Does it answer Gettier counterfactuals? What does it mean for truth and belief to meet? How is that meeting constituted? What does “quantifiable” mean?

It is too late for such questions. The article is finished.

At the end of the day the reader is left wondering what the nature of knowledge is, because half of a sentence romantically worded is neither perspicuous nor helpful, leaving the reader nowhere closer to understanding how Oxley defines knowledge, much less finding a solid argument why that is the proper nature thereof. What is the nature of knowledge? One cannot say, other than it has something to do with truth and belief meeting. What escapes me is how that is “entirely different” from his conception of knowledge as a believer. Consider, for example, the notion that faith is “the place where quantifiable truths meet belief.” How does Oxley’s romantic clause differentiate faith and knowledge?

If this is his definition of knowledge, then why did he lose his faith?

1. ^[1] He idolizes it in the sense of idolatry, for as he said (emphasis mine); “I’ve always valued Truth—so much that I’ve often capitalized it, as if the word Truth were just as good as the word God. (Actually, it’s better.)” ↩
2. ^[2] Matt Oxley, “Popular misconceptions: Knowing truth,” RagingRev (2011, August 4). ↩

There is this older lady on the Dalnet IRC network who for many years has exhibited a seething antipathy for Reformed theology, and has somewhat more recently been trying to understand the presuppositionalism by which those who are Reformed tend to argue their worldview. Although I often do not bother engaging her on such subjects (given certain reasons that experience has produced), tonight I acquiesced. Since who she is on IRC is not relevant, I have chosen to give her the name “Lisa” in the following conversation.

Read the rest of this entry

“If you had to choose between truth and comfort, which would you choose?”

So the question is posed by Matt Oxley rhetorically to the readers of his blog as a way of introducing his thoughts on the existential tension between truth on the one hand and comfort on the other, a tension he experienced as he progressively expunged his former charismatic Christian faith, a painful process of replacing what was comfortable with what is true. Oxley is a self-proclaimed atheist who is sharing with others the dimensions and contours of his journey away from the charismatic faith that he once held dear, an itinerarium mentis in a direction opposite of mine toward an ostensibly godless view of the world and life.

“When I began recognizing this truth,” he writes regarding the deception in charismatic churches, “it was anything but comfortable.” And this former comfort he describes as a sort of uneasy truce between how he wanted the world to be and how it actually is, a cognitive dissonance maintained by a promissory note of a celestial afterlife. Now if that accurately characterizes the intellectual life of the charismatic, well then, I could hardly fault his journey away from it. In addition to the moralist burden he describes having to shoulder (i.e., “denying your carnal desires and working to please [God] all of your life”), the intellectual anorexia would surely leave me desperate for something more authentic and honest. For some of us, a group I suspect Oxley would count himself among, such intellectual curiosity is inexorable and insatiable. But just here marks a notable difference between someone like Oxley and someone like myself; we both came to a point where we lost faith in a childish understanding of God, but I did not confuse that with losing faith in God whereas Oxley did. Having said that, there is a more important observation that I should like to make about his post.

He places such a high value on truth that often he capitalizes it, almost as though the word Truth were just as good as the word God (although on his view it is better). I should think that as a former Christian he could probably define to some extent what ‘God’ means, and he certainly defined what ‘comfort’ means, but notice the odd fact that he never bothers to define what ‘truth’ means. “The way I determine what is true,” he said, “has changed dramatically,” but then notice that he never bothers to give that account. How is it that someone who esteems truth above comfort can provide an account of the latter but offer nothing on the former? He described what his perspective on truth used to be: “I used to believe that if the Bible said it [then] it must be Truth. I didn’t even have to question that conclusion; my faith allowed for that to be so.” Yes but that was when he firmly staked his yellow Gadsden flag in the soil of comfort. “It was comfortable to me and I had no reason to question it.” Things are different now, he would have us believe. Comfort was swallowed up in truth, that principle he esteems enough to capitalize but not enough to provide an account of. He surrendered comfort to pursue truth, but was that before or after determining what is true? And this issue is made all the more salient by his comment about embracing the “standard of evidence” he knew existed but ignored most of his life, which represents a potential confusion of the metaphysical (what is true) with the epistemological (how we know it).

I can appreciate Oxley’s disdain for the way he viewed the world and life in his charismatic faith, but I find myself concerned by the echoes of Eden reverberating through his equally naive approach to this new journey. Has he exchanged comfort for truth, or just one type of comfort for another? While he says that he has a very different way of determining what is true, he does not give any sort of account of that except by means of what that way used to be and no longer is. Moreover, even his description of the way he used to determine what is true is not entirely meaningful. “If the Bible said it, then it must be truth.” For that to be meaningful there must be some way of determining what the Bible said (i.e., rules and principles of interpretation). I could go on but the point has been made. I should like to offer a challenge to Oxley for an upcoming blog post:

• “Please explain the way you now determine what is true.”

I am not sure I can entirely relate to Oxley’s experience of existential tension between truth and comfort. I am a critical skeptic by nature, an intellectual attitude that I had not only prior to my conversion to the Christian faith but one that has been deeply cultivated by that faith; that is to say, I have always pursued that which shakes me up from intellectual comfort, constantly seeking out things that challenge my beliefs. I am not sure why someone would prefer comfort over truth the way Oxley did; it is a foreign concept to me. But that just goes to underscore the point I had implicitly made earlier, that one does not need to lose faith in God in order to abandon a childish understanding of faith in God. Truth, logic, reason, knowledge, science, etc.; such things thrive under Christian theology, notwithstanding some weak charismatic faith that cowers with a contrary opinion. I applaud Oxley for turning his back on an intellectual wasteland, but I do not understand his choice of embracing another one.

———-

Matt Oxley, “Truth over comfort,” RagingRev (2011, August 25).
http://ragingrev.com/2011/08/truth-over-comfort/