Circular reasoning

I hope you’re feeling in the mood to question existence.

I was reading an interesting debate the other day, which is available to watch (sort of) on YouTube. Anyway, it didn’t take too long for the idea of circular reasoning to come up – here’s a quick summary:

The Christian worldview starts with the assumption that the Bible is the highest authority. If something disagrees with the Bible it must be discounted as an anomalous result. The conclusion, of course, will be that the Bible is true because all the valid evidence agrees with it.

Clearly circular reasoning.

The atheist worldview starts with the assumption that human reason is the highest authority. If something disagrees with human reason it must be discounted as an anomalous result. The conclusion, of course, will be that human reason is the best approach because all the valid evidence agrees with it.

NOTE. The two summary paragraphs above are almost identical, just replacing ‘the Bible’ with ‘human reason’, yet somehow taking the Bible as ultimate authority is seen as a step of faith, yet taking human reason as the highest authority is seen as just sensible.

The real issue here is that human reason is clearly and demonstrably full of flaws. Using human reason I am very aware that my mind is not perfect, so how can I ever trust any conclusions that are drawn using human reason?! It is an ultimate authority which undermines itself.

I have evidence that Neptune does not exist

Image by The Doctr via Flickr

Are you ready? This is Science speaking:

1. To prove that Neptune exists, it must be observed through a telescope.
2. I do not have access to a telescope.
3. Neptune, therefore, does not exist.

Of course, this is ridiculous, but it’s a style of arguing used by many (all?) Dawkins-following New Atheists.

Here’s an example:

1. If Jesus of Nazareth was raised from death, people would have seen him.
2. I have never seen him.
3. Jesus of Nazareth, therefore,  didn’t rise again.

I’m sure many of us are aware of Tim Keller’s book The Reason For God. It’s an excellent book – not perfect, but excellent nonetheless. In it, Keller does two things: (1) shows that arguments against God hold no weight, and (2) shows that evidence does exist for God.

Some guy has posted his detailed review of this book online, and entitled it The Reason Against God.

The Newfrontiers Theology Forum blog has gone through his response, and have basically concluded that his arguments are formed in the same way as those above.

In essence, here are this guy’s conclusions:

1. Keller is pretty much correct when it comes to showing that the arguments against God are rubbish.

2. The evidence for God isn’t strong enough to prove beyond any doubt that He actually exists.

The first statement is a good one, and I want to congratulate that guy on having the guts as an atheist to admit what everyone thinks deep down: the existence of suffering (for example) doesn’t disprove God, it’s circular logic.

I’d want to say fair enough to the second statement, but unfortunately this is where his response falls a bit flat. Here’s a quote from the review, in which he says why he can’t become a Christian:

Keller goes on to talk about the “final clue”, namely, that believing in God explains all of the previous clues. Perhaps, but only if you’re prepared to regard God as basic enough to be the place where the buck stops in these explanations, without requiring an explanation for God. There are people who find that sort of explanation satisfying, but there are others, like me, who regard it as giving up.

Doesn’t it sound clever and scientific? Here’s the rebuttal:

Translation: theism does explain all the clues, but there is still a problem, in that if the origin of God cannot be explained, then theism is ‘giving up’. Or more bluntly: a necessary, eternal being is philosophically incoherent, and should be rejected no matter what the evidence. Which will be a great surprise to philosophers from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas right through to Antony Flew and Keith Ward. With respect all round, I think a proposal like that requires more than three sentences to substantiate.

So anyway, here’s the conclusion: The Reason For God is a great book; read it. Don’t dismiss Christianity just because you don’t understand it, or because you think it’s an easy way out.

Oh yes, and check out the response to the response (part one, part two).

Wow, Richard Dawkins just has no idea

Do you want to experience a nice big, belly chuckle? Ok, you talked me into it. Have a watch of this video, in which Richard Dawkins actually suggests that the reason why scientific evidence points towards intelligent design is that a superior being created all life…but that of course that superior, higher power must have evolved. Right…

 

Decaffeinated coffee

From Fake Science and 22 Words. Thank you.

How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski

This book is a manual written for current and future university students, designed to give them good preparation for coping with the spiritual battleground that is the uni campus.

I was excited about this book. It seemed to directly address a real problem, talking about real issues and not backing down. It was also really practical, so even though the opening chapters were talking about theology, the application was wonderfully clear.

But that said, I think the book let itself down when it tried to become too practical. In particular some imaginary conversations were recorded to show how certain logic can overcome incorrect worldviews, but it just didn’t seem realistic enough for me.

The two chapters on sex and politics stood out as particularly unhelpful. While I fully agreed with almost everything the author said, the analogies were flawed and talked about things which don’t seem that much of a concern any more. Maybe it’s because I’m from the UK but politics didn’t massively interest anyone I knew when I was at uni!

Overall I think this book’s heart is in the right place. It will certainly encourage Christian teenagers to enter university prepared to discuss their opinions in an informed manner. That said, I don’t think this would do much more than provide ammunition for a teenager who was ready to rebel at 18.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Good luck

I sat an exam for work over the summer. The last thing one of my colleagues said to me as I left the office to go home and study was:

Good luck!

Not very creative, I hear you say. But what he said got me thinking. I’m currently working in an office built by the Chinese – it’s very nice, but I’m working on floor 3A, because apparently the number four is unlucky.

Why is four unlucky? Does eating food from a square table make you more prone to getting indigestion? Or why does a black cat crossing your path spell bad news? At the end of the day, what is luck?

One web definition says that luck is ‘an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another’. In other words, it’s something that influences circumstances which isn’t people’s efforts, and isn’t simply chance – a ‘lucky’ person is more likely to roll a 6 in the chocolate game.

So belief in luck is belief in a higher power which is uncontrollable, unknowable, and unobservable. Luck is the all-powerful god who you can’t ask a favour of. Now the person who said it to me is an atheist. He’s happy to believe in a higher power which secretly changes the course of history so long as that higher power doesn’t have a personality.

Belief in luck sounds pretty depressing to me. ‘Regardless of what you think, say, or do, luck will do exactly what it wants, whether you want it or not.’ I think I’ll stick with Jesus: ‘we know that for those who love God all things work together for good’ (Romans 8:28).

I passed the exam, by the way.

Animals: morally good?

I bit the inside of my cheek on Saturday. That really hurts, doesn’t it? It happened, and I caught myself thinking: why the heck haven’t we evolved enough not to bite our own body by mistake?

That led to the thought: I’ve never seen a monkey, or any other animal for that matter, biting the inside of its own cheek by mistake. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any animal do anything ‘by mistake’.

Here’s where I ended up: I have never seen any animal doing anything which is morally wrong. I think that animals actually have no ability to do something ‘bad’, but every single human does something ‘bad’ in their life if given the chance.

So, Monday morning thought: humans are somewhat different to animals. Discuss.

Beyond Opinion by Ravi Zacharias (ed)

A collection of the finest and most respected apologists on the planet combined their skill and knowledge to bring this work to my bookshelf. By looking at a vast range of situations and audiences the book aims to inspire the reader to take apologetics beyond opinion to changed lives based on truth.

The key message for this book is that it’s not an apologetics book itself. I expected it to be full of convincing arguments to build my faith, but that’s not its purpose so if that’s what you’re looking for you’ll be disappointed, despite the list of authors!

In my opinion the last chapter is the best, in which Zacharias pushes home the importance of a radically changed life, the church community, and the development of apologetics into more than a debate. If I’d read this chapter first, the rest of the book would have made much more sense.

On the whole the book’s very strong. The authors are knowledgeable and give a good background about all of the topics covered. But there’s a problem in the wide range of topics – covering all Eastern and New Age religions in one short chapter doesn’t really do them justice and just leaves you asking more questions than you started with.

If you’re into apologetics I’d encourage you to read this book because it will get your priorities right, but don’t expect to receive a bunch of new arguments because it doesn’t do that.

I got this book for free from BookSneeze. I’m not required to give a positive review.

What faith is

Ask anyone what their definition for ‘faith’ is and I reckon you’d get a whole range of answers. The most common one, however, is most likely to be the on which atheist commenters on this blog seem to chuck around like a hot potato:

Faith is believing that something exists, despite a lack of evidence for it.

That’s all well and good but that sounds more like folly than faith to me!

Just imagine for a moment that I said to you: ‘I have faith in my boss,’ or ‘I have faith in my wife’. You would hear me saying ‘I know that my boss/wife is real, and I trust that they will be true to their word and character.’

That’s what the Bible presents as faith in God. Michael Ramsden said that ‘faith is not speculation that God is: it is knowing that God is.’

In other words, faith for a Christian is not a blind leap of faith – it’s a well-informed step into the light which allows us to see and be seen!

I would suggest that people who say they have ‘faith in God’ but don’t know whether he exists or not perhaps don’t have any faith after all…

Let’s talk probability

I’m sure many readers of this blog have heard about the argument against evolution referred to as ‘fine tuning’. The fact is that the universe exists in its current habitable state due to a high number of constants which are set. If even one of these shifted even the smallest amount, the universe could not exist in its present state.

For example, Paul Davies tells us in God and the New Physics tells us that if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic force had been different by one part in 10 to the power 16, no stars could have been formed at all.

Now, 10 to the power 16 means one with 16 zeroes behind it: 10,000,000,000,000,000 – that is a bigger number than you or I can possibly comprehend so the probability that stars even exist is astronomically tiny.

Add this into the mix: to shift the ratio by even 1 in 10 to the power 40(!!) and we’d have either all small, or all large stars – and we need both to create the elements (in large stars) and support life (small stars). This is just silly – I can’t really imagine 1 million, or 1 million million, or 1 million million million, and 10 to the power 40 is many, many times larger than that!

But let’s cut to the chase. The level of entropy in the universe, supported by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is only possible if it started off accurate to one part in 10 to the power 10 to the power 123. That’s not a typo.

So that’s one in a number starting with 1, with as many zeroes after it as would add up to the number which starts with 1 and has 123 zeroes – this number is impossible to write out in decimal because even if you wrote a zero on every particle in the entire universe there aren’t enough.

Chance that nothing became everything by random mutation: small to none.