Beyond a reasonable doubt

John W. Loftus said:

“You guys don't merely see things differently than I do, you really fail to understand what I'm saying. You can misconstrue my thoughts all you want to if it makes you feel good, but you're not dealing with what I believe.”

Actually, we understand perfectly well what you’re saying.

“What I'm saying is that I have never seen an event in my expereience which requires a supernatural explanation--that is, something which science cannot explain based upon the laws of nature.”

i) Ah, but you didn’t say that before. You see, we can only understand what you say, and not what you leave unsaid. Terribly limited of us, I know.

ii) I also disagree with where you affix the burden of proof.

I’ve never seen an event in my experience which “requires” a natural explanation.

As I said before, science can only deal with appearances. It can peel back one phenomenal layer to uncover another appearance, but it’s appearances all the way down. So science can never rule out a supernatural explanation.

iii) As to the “laws of nature,” it’s true that natural events ordinarily have an automated quality to them, so, they don’t require an supernatural explanation at the level of secondary causation, just as I can explain certain car parts by immediate reference to robotics rather than human intervention.

However, automation presupposes intelligent intervention in the design stage. Someone had to plan it and to build it.

iv) You act as if one needs extraordinary evidence instead of ordinary evidence to believe in God.

But that’s like walking into an empty, automated factory, and then exclaiming that there’s no evidence of design since everything is done by the law-like regularity of the mindless machines.

Well, the evidence is all around me. The factory is, itself, evidence of design even if the designer is off-site.

One doesn’t need a special omen.

v) I’d’ add that while there’s no event that ever demands a strictly natural explanation, there are events demanding a supernatural explanation.

“You don't realize it but you are doing the exact same thing that I am doing. You claim to have personally experienced God, answered prayer, and maybe an astounding event (or even miracle), and so you conclude that since such a thing happened to you that it could happen in the past also. If I'm being irrational (which is a very large claim...the larger the claim the harder it is to defend it) then so are you!”

I don’t conclude that miracles have happened in the past because miracles have happened to me.

Although I’ve had a few encounters which I’d classify as preternatural, that was after I already became a Christian.

I am aware of God’s providential hand in my life, but you need to be a Christian for some time for that pattern to emerge.

As I said before, one doesn’t need any extraordinary evidence to believe in God, and one can believe in extraordinary events (miracles) on the basis of second-hand evidence (credible testimony).

“Maybe Christian theologian I. Howard Marshall is irrational then?”

Well, we do have to make allowance for the fact that he’s an Arminian! J

“I. Howard Marshall argued that our particular framework (worldview, or set of presuppositions) and the historical evidence ‘stand in a dialectical relationship to one another.’ ‘We interpret evidence in light of our presuppositions, and we also form our presuppositions in the light of the evidence. It is only through a ‘dialogue’ between presuppositions and evidence that we gain both sound presuppositions and a correct interpretation of the evidence. The process is circular and unending. It demands openness on the part of the investigator. He must be prepared to revise his ideas in the light of the evidence, for ultimately it is the evidence which is decisive.’”

“Okay so far?”

It will do for now.

“He's right about this. This is the best that a human being can do. But even Marshall admits that while the Christian should be prepared to let his worldview be altered by the evidence, ‘his world view is part of the evidence, and cannot be simply laid aside.’ And while Marshall argues that a modern day personal experience of ‘the risen Lord’ is a ‘relevant factor’ in assessing the historical facts regarding the resurrection of Jesus, ‘if a person fails to have a personal experience of the risen Lord, this may prove to him that the biblical evidence does not support belief in the resurrection of Jesus.’ [I Believe in the Historical Jesus (Eerdmans, 1977), pp. 98-101.)]”

The formulation is misleading. In this life we know Jesus by description rather than acquaintance.

A Christian has a personal experience of God’s grace and providence, but he doesn’t enjoy direct contact with the risen Lord.

“Anon. You believe in an uncaused being who didn't gain his complexity the only way we know how, incrementally, but that he had all knowledge and power and presence as a three in one being.”

The Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex without having achieved its complexity by incremental steps or stages. Indeed, an actual infinite cannot be incrementally realized. It’s a given totality.

“I believe in a quantum wave fluctuation which, while unexplainable, is much simpler. That's what I prefer, especially when it comes to your God who reveals himself in ways we don't understand…”

As a rule, God does, indeed, reveal himself in ways we understand. That’s the point of having a revelation in the first place—to disclose his purposes to man.

What we don’t understand is what he has chosen to keep to himself, although we understand why it’s necessary for God to keep his own counsel.

“Demands that we believe or be damned for slighting him even though there isn't enough evidence to believe’”

A tendentious claim.

“And in spite of the fact that he shows no sign of averting the many kinds of sufferings we experience.”

That doesn’t count as evidence against the existence of God unless revelation fostered the expectation that God would do otherwise, which is not the case.

There is no promise in Scripture that God will avert all our sufferings. To the contrary, we are told that we will suffer in this life.

“And even creating some of it (the poisonous plant, spider, snake)”

These creatures serve a natural purpose in the ecosystem. This is not a surd or gratuitous evil.

“And blames all of this misery on us when he created us with such propensities and even knew in advance we'd follow our instincts.”

God doesn’t blame us for following our natural instincts. Sin and nature are hardly the same thing.