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.

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This argument arose on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in the #ChristianDebate chat room on the Dalnet network. Since I was engaged with another fellow in a rather in-depth conversation on issues pertaining to the gospel, this following argument proposed by the gentleman below did not receive any attention from me at the time. I assured him that I would respond to him the next time we saw each other; but since I am having a difficult time staying connected to IRC lately, I decided that I would respond to him here and simply provide him a link to this article the next chance I get.

On Saturday evening (17:39 PDT) Grey_Fox said that my presupposing the truth of the Bible as the word of God

does not meet the definition of axiom as “the fundamental starting point” because you were not born believing the Bible. There must have been some line of reasoning that caused you to originally believe that the Bible was the word of God, and that line of reasoning was, if not the fundamental starting point, at least closer to it. 

First, when I say “fundamental starting point” I am not somehow talking about beliefs people are born with, so that issue is not relevant to this (however interesting it might otherwise be). I am talking about that which must be the case in order for something else to be the case, that is, the relationship between some Q and the P upon which it necessarily depends. Irrespective of whether we were born with them or not, we all have axiomatic starting points upon which the rest of our mental furniture depends, the necessary P from which we argue for Q.

Second, the suggestion that there was “a line of reasoning” by which I arrived at the belief that the Bible is true simply assumes without warrant that my presupposition is not an axiomatic starting point—which is a fallacious move that begs the question against my view. An axiom by definition is not something a person reasons to; rather it is something a person reasons from. If you want to claim that my belief is something that I reasoned to, not from, then you will have to shoulder the burden of proof and make your case—but without begging the question.

The heart of this post, I hope, can be summarily found in a statement by James Emery White. “What decisively marks a Christian mind is that it is informed by revelation … and then proceeds to think in light of that revelation.” – White, J.E., Serious Times, (Inter Varsity Press, 2004), p.104

With that said I just want to make it clear that my main goal in this post is to demonstrate the natural consequences of biblical compromise. So while I do make many statements against an evolutionary worldview, my intention is simply to highlight the compromise position of the piece for Christian readers – being that it is allegedly written from a Christian’s perspective – and not to engage in great detail on the finite details of the evolutionary worldview. Therefore I do not intend to allow (or argue against) conclusions drawn by non-Christians, who do not accept such authority in the first place and have their own a priori materialistic paradigms and philosophies that will not, by definition, permit some of the conclusions I have made.^[1] Those discussions belong in a separate area.

The article (written a few years ago now) by Peter Sellick is titled “Intelligent Design – Damaging Good Science and Good Theology” – Friday, 9 September 2005. But it does represent a growing view among some evangelical Christians. For example, the recent book by Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? 

I have not dealt with every comment in Sellick’s article because it’s just too long. But I think I have captured and responded to the main points.

According to the On Line Opinion webpage, Peter Sellick is currently an Anglican deacon working in Perth (Western Australia) with a background in the biological sciences. This, I am sure, makes him far more qualified than I to speak on theology or science, but I humbly offer this criticism as one who cares about the truth of Scripture.

The idea of intelligent design is that the universe, particularly the life contained therein, is too complex to have happened by chance as the theory of evolution would have it.

A more complete representation of Intelligent Design (ID) would also mention the observation of what appears to be irreducibly complex systems and specified information with those systems.

Therefore its sole basis lies in a negative:

Keep in mind that this claim is right at the beginning of Sellick’s article and he immediately poisons the well. To the contrary, as many in the ID movement have pointed out, it is not some fall-back position that people cling to because they’re blinded to the wisdom of an evolutionary worldview. It is based on a positive: an innate ability to discern design in our world. It is supported by a historical knowledge of cause and effect, acknowledging that it is most reasonable to think that the source of information and complexity contained in living systems is due to the actions of an intelligent agent. This is a completely reasonable premise upon which ID can stand. It certainly does not lie ‘in a negative’.

On the other hand, evolution by natural selection (which Sellick seems to support) is a dysteleological process seen to act on systems already possessing the information and complexity that it is claimed to have produced, and therefore provides no reasonable basis to explain the origin of these systems in the first place.

the failure to imagine how natural selection could arrive at the complexity of life we see all around us.

Imagination isn’t the problem. Rationality is. Put simply, many people think it is more reasonable that complex information-bearing systems are the product of intelligence rather than the result of random mindless forces. If observation counts for anything in science, natural selection is extremely limited in what it can achieve. (See for example Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution). It simply acts on pre-existing complex systems. It cannot create them or add information to them. In fact, it is the contention of ID-ists like Phillip Johnson that natural selection has no demonstrable creative power at all.

“Darwinian theory insists that natural selection is a creative force of immense power … We have already seen that the hypothesis of creative natural selection lacks experimental support” [chapters 2 and 3] “and that it is disconfirmed by the fossil record. The molecular evidence adds further doubt … The hypothesis that natural selection has the degree of creative power required by Darwinist theory remains unsupported by empirical evidence … [But] Darwinist know that the mutation-selection mechanism can produce wings, eyes, and brains not because the mechanism can be observed to do anything of the kind, but because their guiding philosophy assures them that no other power is available to do the job. The absence from the cosmos of any Creator is therefore the essential starting point for Darwinism.” – Johnson, P.E., Darwin On Trial, (Inter Varsity Press 1993, 2nd edition), p. 95, 98, 117.

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The failing philosophy that allegedly grounds the ideas presented in the new book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow has drawn much criticism over the last couple of months – even from those who agree with his conclusions. I certainly don’t intend to offer any new or profound thoughts on the matter. Nor do I intend to pontificate on the details of quantum physics, especially when those who are actually qualified to do so think it makes “absolutely no sense” (to quote Roger Penrose).

I simply want to draw your attention to the failing philosophy of the book – something that Hawking and Mlodinow characterize as “Scientific Determinism” (SD) – and point you in the direction of one who is demonstrably more qualified and seemingly more careful in his thinking on that subject than either Hawking or Mlodinow appear to have been.

Greg Koukl (M.A Philosophy and Ethics) writes in the most recent edition of his bi-monthly newsletter, Solid Ground:

For Hawking and Mlodinow … event causation governs everything—even human choices. Determinism is absolute. There are no exceptions, even human ones. Everything, including human nature, must submit to the sovereignty of physics:

Since people live in the universe and interact with other objects in it, then scientific determinism must hold for people as well….[p.30]

Do people have free will?…Though we feel that we can choose…biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets….[p.31-32]

Our physical brain, following the known laws of science…determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. [p.32]

So it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion. [p.32] [emphases added]

It’s hard to believe brilliant men like Hawking and Mlodinow do not see how destructive this move is to their own case, but I think you will see it readily.

Let me put the question this way: Did the laws of physics determine the order of the words on the pages of The Grand Design? Or did Professors Hawking and Mlodinow make that call? Did they ponder the evidence for their theories, consider the implications of the facts, posit conclusions, then choose the right words and select the precise order that would best communicate their views and persuade readers of the rationality of their own ideas?

…in light of SD … ultimately, the laws of physics wrote the book that bears their names no less than the laws of physics determined the arrangement of rocks resting on the surface of the planet Mars. … Remember, the only causation Hawking & Mlodinow allow for is event causation—dominoes fatalistically falling—which is rigidly deterministic.

In other words, if Hawking and Mlodinow are right, they’re wrong. Moreover, it becomes meaningless to talk of the person “Hawking” or “Mlodinow” as agents capable of free thought and action. As this mock interview highlights, the universe deserves all the credit, not beings who merely appear to think and reason for themselves.

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Over at a blog called An Atheist Debater is an author who attempted to tackle what he thoughtfully considers to be “one of the most useless and easily refutable” arguments for the existence of God: the Argument from Design. According to this gentleman, the teleological argument “is so ridiculously fallacious it’s laughable.” What I intend to explore here are two things. First, did he succeed at proving it commits a fallacy? And second, did his own argument commit a fallacy?

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It may be said that a man who loaned $5000 to an old friend did so in “good faith” or that he ventured into business with his younger brother in whom “he had faith.” Both occurrences imply one thing: that the man had reason to place his faith in his brother or his friend. Sure, the reasons may or may not be sound, but one thing you could not readily say – at least, not just on the bare outlines that I’ve given here – is that the man acted purely on “blind faith.” Why is it, then, that when that man’s faith is in his belief in God that the world goes stir-crazy? Suddenly, the man is held to have no rationale for his belief; his faith in a deity borders on the absurd. Therefore, in the common vernacular, such a man’s faith is his folly, not the act of a thinking mind.

Hence, faith is the new f-bomb.

Culturally, faith is broadly understood as something to be ridiculed, to be discounted and pushed aside merely as one’s personal belief (such is a common usage amongst Christians in today’s churches) or one’s personal delusion (such is the charge of most skeptics). But both the Christian and the skeptic, should they hold that faith is nothing more than fanciful thinking or a clinging to something without sound reason, overlook not only the historical founding of Christianity but also the texts of the Bible itself. Both should take a closer look – the skeptic in order to be more intellectually honest in his objections to Christianity; the Christian in order that he may more fully appreciate and affirm the strengths of what he believes in.

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Usually I don’t bother paying any attention to The Bahnsen Burner, a blog run by an Atheist named Dawson Bethrick, and it would take less than five minutes at his site for a person to see why. It has almost nothing to do with the actual merits of his arguments and everything to do with the fact that locating and identifying an argument within his landslide argumentum verbosium is just too laborious a task. I share the same view as Joshua Whipps over at Choosing Hats: until Bethrick decides to express arguments or criticisms with succinct perspicuity instead of proof-by-verbosity, [1] I simply can’t be bothered to engage his material. It requires more time than I have available.

The only reason that I am even aware Bethrick had recently tackled my “Arrogance of Atheism” articles [2] is because one of our staff members, Mathew Hamilton, directed me to it. I would have otherwise never known. And so for Hamilton’s sake alone I have reviewed Bethrick’s piece, shouldering the laborious task of locating and identifying his arguments in order to respond to them. I shall not repeat this endeavour (even though Bethrick will probably be unable to resist carving out an entertaining albeit verbose Chewbacca Defense), as this response will suffice to demonstrate that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the bankruptcy of Atheist objections.

And no, Bethrick, our staff will not publish your loquacious tomes in the Comments field to this (or any other) article. Comments must be composed with succinct perspicuity. If you want to do a verbal dump, there is always The Bahnsen Burner—where no one has to see it unless they masochistically want to. I will return to ignoring you, although you are free to continue directing traffic here by writing about our articles.

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Several years ago, long before this site ever existed and once hosted somewhere long since dead, I had written a very pointed and brief thought-piece about “The Arrogance of Atheism.” It had garnered the attention of Austin Reed Cline, a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of the Atheism section of the About.com web portal, who had published an excoriating and profoundly inaccurate review of my article. Some time last year I decided to resurrect that piece and republish it here, and to include not only Cline’s rebuttal but my response to him as well.

Around that same time I extended an invitation for Cline to interact with me on the response I had composed. His response can be found in the comments to the relevant article at his portal here, and the remainder of this article is my answer to him.

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In the original article published at our web site, we had addressed the question, “How is God relevant anymore, now that we have science?” If you have not read that original article, it might be best that you do, since this follow-up article shall be addressing a rebuttal offered by someone from AtheistForums.org named Tavarish. (His real name is withheld out of respect for his privacy, as he has not disclosed it publically.)

Although Tavarish had a lot to say, he could have spared himself a significant amount of writing because, for some curious reason, nearly half of his rebuttal was devoted to articulating what the scientific method truly is and how it is engaged. He could have spared himself all that writing because not only do I understand the scientific method already but, more importantly, that had nothing to do with what my article had to say. In other words, he invested a tremendous amount of writing in describing what the flashlight is and how to properly use it, whereas my article simply took those sort of issues for granted in order to address an antecedent issue: the fact that the flashlight works in the first place and how to account for that. I think Tavarish was very forceful and clear in his rebuttal, but unfortunately he was rebutting something other than my article. If he wants to make his stand on when a theory is scientific and when it is not, he might be surprised to find me standing beside him. Quite simply, the issue was never the demarcation problem, despite his attempt to insist otherwise, but rather the foundations upon which science rests (taking for granted what science is).

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