No Good Reason To Be An Atheist

This is a guest post by Dustin Segars of Shepherd's Fellowship Baptist Church in Greensboro, NC. This is one of his seminars at the RCTR Conference. I have volunteered to post it at Triablogue on his behalf. Any responses may be addressed to him at this email: pastor@sfofgso.org.

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No Good Reason To Be An Atheist

Pastor Dustin S. Segers

INTRODUCTION

Good morning, I am not going to discuss all the individual problems of the various strands of atheism (which will change from atheist to atheist in a “buffet bar” fashion), but I hope to present the various epistemologies (theories of knowledge) that undergird the thinking of atheists, the major flaws of those epistemologies, and the proper, biblical solution.

The 5^th century before Jesus saw the rise of a group of teachers in Greece, a group which included men like Protagoras, Anhippius, Thrasimacus, and Gorgeus which came to be called the Sophists. The Gk. Term sophists was used to denote one who was “wise” or “a skilled one” and came to be originally applied to such men because they were skilled in rhetoric and debate and they made their living teaching grammar, linguistics, and especially wisdom about mankind and political theory. By the 2^nd century before Christ the term “sophist” had generally come to denote a teacher of rhetoric, someone who was paid to teach a young man learn to master, and most importantly manipulate argumentation so as to persuade his political order or those within his sphere of influence in a particular direction. In his dialogue titled Sophist, Plato doesn’t treat such teachers as genuine seekers after truth, but rather indicates a great disdain for the Sophists as men who were concerned only with making money and securing success in argumentation by any means necessary. So, given the history, the Sophist in Plato’s day pretty much had the reputation of what a politician has in ours; a man who can get himself ahead and get his own way, and Plato didn’t like that.

Above all, what the Sophist represented was a frontal attack upon traditional ideas and the teaching of relativism, which in turn lead to epistemological and moral skepticism. It was at that point that Plato was stung philosophically and said, “there has to be a reaction.” The common, fundamental sophistic doctrines included the doctrine that we can’t know anything but our sense impressions. We even hear that today from atheists and we’ve even had some Christian apologists who tell us things like that – that all we can know is what our senses bring to us. Well, once you begin with that kind of theory of knowledge and learn something about the way a man’s conceptualization effects what his senses tell him then it’s a very natural step to relativism because the way I perceive the world is going to depend upon my social setting, my upbringing, my conceptual scheme, my personality, and any number of other things that would not seem to have any necessary connection with the truth. So, the Sophist believed that men could only know things by their sense impressions, and of course the famous saying which is at the heart of humanism, the doctrine that man is the measure of all things – the standard by which everything is evaluated is man, and in particular, the individual man.

Another doctrine of theirs was that universal truths do not exist. To the sophist, there was no truth which holds in all societies and at all times, or any truths about universals and as well, that truth is simply a matter of convention. It is important to note that Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle all in their own ways reacted strongly against the absurdity of Sophistic doctrine and the horrible results it was bringing for man’s knowledge and man’s society. Since the classical days of philosophical polemic, it has just naturally become the case that issues in communication theory, rhetoric, or debate have been closely intertwined with fundamental questions in philosophy, and in particular, intertwined with the fundamental questions of epistemology – the theory of knowledge. The doctrines upon which the modern masters of debate and speech proceed are philosophical doctrines and the doctrines that modern philosophers master are the doctrines which lead naturally out to theories of communication, debate, and rhetoric. The all important question across the centuries in epistemology, and therefore an underlying issue throughout the centuries in philosophy is this question: Is there any knowledge that can count as certain? Can we be certain of anything?

Bertrand Russell, who was perhaps the most prolific 20^th century philosopher opened his treatment of the book The Problems of Philosophy in 1912 (1^st ed.) with these words,

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man can doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy, for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions. And what is the most ultimate question in philosophy? Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man can doubt it?

In epistemology (the theory of knowledge), this question has been a critical one for philosophers. The philosophical scholar not only discusses what reality is and what moral obligations mankind has but he must also ask “How do we know that these things are so, how do we know that reality is this way, how do we know that we have this moral duty?” You can’t avoid such questions when studying the theory of knowledge in philosophy any more than a marine biologist can avoid the ocean. Studying epistemology is just the context in which we do philosophy. While it is certainly not the whole of philosophy, epistemology has dominated philosophy since the 17^th century and its crucial questions still hold their intellectual challenge even today, especially as it relates to the multiplicities of religious worldviews. So, the burning question is, “Is there any knowledge in the world of which we can be certain? Can anything be known for sure? Can skepticism be answered?”

Such questions as these have been a key motivation in the development of epistemology. In 1934, the guiding spirit of the Vienna Circle (which is from whence the modern analytic movement came), the founder of that movement wrote in the article the Foundation of Knowledge,

All important attempts at establishing a theory of knowledge grow out of the problem concerning the certainty of human knowledge. And this problem in turn originates in the wish for absolute certainty. The insight that the statements of daily life in science can at best be only probable has again and again stimulated philosophers since ancient times to search for an unshakeable, indubitable foundation, a firm basis on which the uncertain structure of our knowledge could rest.[1]

And so the problem of epistemic certainty looms large in the theory of knowledge and thereby has determinative significance for all of philosophy. In Hamlin’s text on epistemology, he writes, “The search for indubitable and infallible truths is therefore a common feature of traditional epistemology.” So epistemology involves the search for certainty.

It is on that note that I’d like to foreshadow what we’re going to end up looking at in some detail by the end of the hour. The search for certainty has lead philosophers into various ways of answering the questions, “How do we find certainty? Do we need certainty?” things like that. Now Christians apologists have done two things (the vast majority have done the one and I’m in the small minority that does the other). The vast majority say (1) we let the secular world determine the standards for obtaining epistemic certainty and then we as Christians come along and say ‘we can meet those standards.’ So, we pass the test of those standards, therefore, you can say Christianity is certain. Now, it doesn’t take any sophisticated work in epistemology or logic to see that if that is your general approach, even if you can get to the conclusion that Christianity is certain (and I don’t believe anybody has done that, I mean there’s a whole lot more in-house talking amongst Christians about the certainty of our faith than there is conviction outside), but even if you get to that, you get to it at a very high price because Christianity becomes certain at the cost of what? Something being more certain that it; namely, those standards set by the secular world!

So whenever you have an apologetic system that argues, “You tell me what the standards of truth and certainty are and I’ll meet those standards and then you’ll see Christianity is true” - even if you get to that conclusion, you have to grant to your opponent that there is something of higher epistemic authority; namely, those very standards that have been delivered to you and by which you measured the truthfulness of Christianity.

Now there’s another fatal defect that goes beyond this; which is if you use this approach for defending the Christianity, you will also end up saying, “. . . and you don’t need Christianity for your standards.” Christianity at best becomes the conclusion of the system, not the heart of the system. You not only say that Christianity is less certain that those secular standards, you’ll end up indirectly saying that those secular standards make sense on their own. This is what Reformed theologians have called autonomy. Something is autonomous when it’s independent, when it’s self-sufficient, when it’s a law unto itself.[2] So, if we prove Christianity is certain by this method, we do so as the cost of granting that secular standards are more certain and that secular standards are autonomous. And, if I were an unbeliever that had some knowledge of philosophy and I realized that these were the implications of the approach I’d say “Even though you’ve proven the resurrection to me, I don’t need Christianity because my standards are sufficient as far as they go. And consequently, Christianity is at best an appendix to my system and not the heart of it. That’s one approach that is taken.

Another approach from a Christian standpoint, is to say, “There can be no certainty regarding anything without Christianity.” Now, on that approach, instead of taking one standard that somebody else gives you, showing that you pass that standard, then concluding that Christianity is true, instead you say, “We can take anything in the world that anybody claims to know (i.e., “I know that that’s my car.” “I know that gasoline is combustible at 70 degrees” “I know that rape is wrong.”), anything that a person knows and challenge them to show how they could possibly know it if the Christian worldview were not true. This is really a turning of the tables – we’re saying that there can be no standards without Christianity. There can be no absolute standards, nothing can be known with certainty without the Christian worldview. Of course, that’s a much bolder claim and you can understand why people would shy away from it because it would seem to lead to the conclusion that unbelievers don’t know anything. But that isn’t what it leads to at all, it leads to the conclusion that unbelievers can know a lot of things, they just can’t account for what they know. Again, they can still know many things, but they can’t give an account of what they know. As Cornelius Van Til used to say, “Unbelievers can count, but they can’t account for their accounting.” So, unbelievers know plenty. My unbelieving physical therapy co-workers know a lot about anatomy, exercise physiology and so forth. But, if the Christian worldview were not true, my unbelieving co-workers couldn’t know anything about bones and muscles and couldn’t do their job. So, my unbelieving co-workers have a job in physical therapy not because their worldview is right, but because my worldview is right. Even though they are taking the measurements of joint angles, strength, and cardiac output, it’s only on the basis of a Christian outlook on life that anything makes sense. Science, math, morals, human dignity, or whatever else you can think of has its epistemological root in Christian theism. So, that should give you a heads up as to where I’m going.

Relativism

Now, there are many kinds of relativism. All of them however are best understood as reactions stimulated by advances in anthropology and the sociology of knowledge; advances which point to the diverse ways in which people see the truth. Now you have to catch that, these advances in anthropology point out the diverse ways in which people see the world or see the truth. In his Nicomachean ethics, Aristotle observes, “Fire burns both in Hellus and in Persia, but men’s ideas of right and wrong vary from place to place.” Now that is a very pithy illustration of relativism. Fire burns everywhere you look, and yet, when you talk about morals, ideas of morals vary from place to place. There’s clearly a difference between what happens when I learn about fire burning and when I talk about whether murder or adultery is wrong. The relativist has this going for him (and I think we must grant this – I would do so), he recognizes the importance of social environment, conceptual scheme, and other sorts of things in determining the content of a person’s beliefs. Secondly, the relativist notes the possibility of a great diversity in such environment, conceptual, scheme, so forth. So, there are things which affect a man’s beliefs: his social upbringing, his conceptual scheme, his expectations. . . and there’s a great diversity in people’s social upbringing, their conceptual scheme, their expectations, and all the rest. So the relativist is certainly correct in noting all these things.

The question of course, is whether these accurate observations should lead us to infer that there are no universal or absolute truths? You see, its one thing to say that there’s all these things working on a person’s belief system, and there’s all this diversity of belief systems, but it’s another thing to say, therefore nothing is absolutely true. In fact there is a tremendous philosophical gap between the true observation of subjective factors in knowledge to the conclusion that everything is subjective, everything’s relative. I think I can illustrate the problem in relativism by beginning with an easy example . . . let me deal with ethical relativism for a moment because we run into this all the time. Think of the maxim (this is a pretty good expression of relativism) “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” The inference is “When in America, do as the Americans do” . . it may be a different country, but the basic message is that you need to get along with your society. So, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Now, is that a specific and categorical universal standard of conduct? When a person says “When in Rome do as the Romans do” is he saying this is universally true? (i.e., Is this is a specific, categorical obligation we are under?) Well it’s hard to see how it could be interpreted otherwise. It certainly does seem like advice you’d follow in all cases: “Get along with the society in which you find yourself.” But you see then a very great difficulty arises because the relativist has come around to stating “the universal standard is that there are no universal standards!” Or to put it another way (just as much tongue in cheek) “the relativist is absolutely sure about his relativism.” But you see if I were a consistent relativist I shouldn’t be relative about my relativism either (i.e., not absolute about it). So when you say “everything is relative” you must at least exclude the remark that “everything is relative.” So, you can see that in morals and that’s just as much true in epistemological or conceptual relativism. To be a relativist about fact is to maintain that there is no such thing as objective knowledge of reality as being independent of the knower. And so the parallel difficulty here is to avoid (if you hold that position), to avoid the inconsistent claim that the relativistic thesis is itself an item of objective knowledge. O.k. so, we have the learned professors of epistemology but you still have these people who say, “There is no absolute truth.” And you notice I put that in quotes because that’s also an item to be considered. Here’s some other relativistic claims that people often make: “Water is wet. Murder is wrong. This discussion is long.” O.k. Now, is water wet? Somebody would say, “Well that’s relative of course depending upon you know, where you come from. Some people that live in watery environments might not observe the wetness of water as much as people who live in dry climates and so uh, the wetness of water is going to be relative to certain factors. Is murder wrong? Well, that’s a real big one, and forgetting of course that murder is defined as that killing which is wrong . . we might say “killing is wrong” here. Now that’s going to be debatable isn’t it? Not everybody agrees with that one and as to the length of this discussion, some of you might have thought that it should’ve been over five minutes ago, others are saying “Oh this is really getting good, let’s keep going” you know, so everything’s relative right? Whether the wetness of water or the wrongness of murder or the longness of this lecture. So the relativist says “There’s my point, there’s my point, there’s my point” and then I turn around and say “Here’s another one we can relativize: “There is no absolute truth.” Since there is no absolute truth, then this is not absolutely true, that is not absolutely true, on and on and on it goes like an infinite regress. And lo and behold, of all the English sentences we can consider here’s another English sentence “That one can’t be absolutely true either!” So, the statement: “There is no absolute truth” cannot be absolutely true if there is no absolute truth! So, you see the difficulty in epistemological relativism, it’s like the person who gets so hungry he starts eating his toes and just can’t stop until he just finally devours himself. Now, what are we going to do to escape epistemological relativism? Let me give you a few quotes. Gordon Coffin in his book Relativism, Knowledge, and Faith writes,

That is, relativistic theories presuppose the very concept of objective validity which they allegedly destroy. And without such presupposition they lose all meaning. For if they do not themselves claim to be objectively valid and true, we have no reason for taking any of the statements and the theories seriously. But if they do make such claims, then it is evident that certain kinds of statements and theories, at least those of the relativist, must be exempt from determination by non-rational, non-logical situational factors. And thus, it is not true that all of man’s knowledge and truth is relative.

So, the second thing we’ve noted here is that there’s a search for certainty in philosophy but epistemological relativism is self-refuting and so now we’re back on the road to finding certainty. How are we going to do that? We’ll let’s turn our attention to foundationalism.

Foundationalism

In the history of Western philosophy perhaps the most common way of finding certainty is what we call foundationalism. Foundationalism is a theory of knowledge that maintains that in order to be sure of our propositions (i.e., our premises), we need to make sure that they are based on adequate and proper foundations for knowledge. Foundationalism aims to obtain cognitive certainty beyond psychological assurance by anchoring one’s belief in some kind of secure basis; namely certain unassailable propositions. And from that foundation we can conduct intellectual inquiries according to strict and reliable methods of reasoning, admitting to our system of thought no propositions which cannot certified by the foundation or by other foundationally certified beliefs and thereby guaranteeing ourselves an accurate depiction of the world. Now this approach to knowledge has enjoyed numerous devotees through history such as Aristotle, Decartes, the logical positivists of the 20^th century and many more. Indeed, foundationalism might be considered “the great banner of Western Enlightenment.” The basic idea with foundationalism is that reason must be given its secure starting point so that knowledge may be gained in the absence of any form of cognitive imperialism. Cognitive imperialism exists in different forms: take arrogance for instance. This would be the person who says, “I know that its true and I don’t have to give an argument for it.” Or dogmatism, the view that “well God said it to me and I know that it’s true” or fideism the view that “well everybody has to start somewhere and this is just where I begin.”

Critical skepticism is not answered by any of these approaches and so the foundationalist wants to assure that not all convictions have an equal claim to acceptance. Not all convictions have an equal claim to acceptance. If you are a relativist, and that leads to skepticism, then it turns out that a person saying “I believe that today is Saturday” and a person who says “I believe the Great Polyglook will come next October” . . . these two propositions are on equal epistemic footing. One is as rational or irrational as the other. And so, foundationalists don’t like that. Of course, none of us really does. Foundationalists in particular don’t like that and they say, “The way you distinguish between reason and unreason is by looking at propositions and seeing whether they are founded.” Ok? So, if I can relate the proposition about this being Saturday to a secure foundation for knowledge, then it counts. But if the Great Polyglook theory cannot be so related to the foundation then it doesn’t count as knowledge. Can anybody tell me what the next question is going to become then if you’re a foundationalist? WHAT’S THE FOUNDATION FOR FOUNDATIONALISM? Right! (i.e., what’s the foundation for foundationalism?)

Its one thing to say that your theory of knowledge has that kind of weblike structure – that everything has to be related to foundations, but then what is the foundation going to be? Here’s some possibilities:

(1) Common Sense Foundationalism. Common sense foundationalism can be found in the 20^th century in the writings of G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein and to some degree in Norman Malcolm’s book Knowledge and Certainty. The position is that certain universal and compulsively held beliefs about readily observable public facts are basic and presupposed by all other beliefs. What kind of belief would that be? Here’s one: “There are other people. Yeah, I believe there are other people.” Now that would be considered a universal, compulsively held belief about a readily observable public fact which is basic and presupposed by all my other beliefs. Now as the final courts of appeal in all inquiries and disputes, these common sense beliefs are logically (now notice that), they are logically beyond the possibility of correction. See if I get down to the foundation, there’s nothing more foundational than the foundation or else we’re not really at the foundation. So logically I can’t correct such beliefs if they are in the foundation. However, such beliefs we must recognize, offer a jeopardized and thus unsuccessful candidate for foundational beliefs. They do not provide infallible knowledge but only what is known in philosophy incorrigible[3] knowledge. As unavoidably imposed as common sense beliefs may be, there is no guarantee that things actually are as they seem to us to be. You see, somebody might say, “My beliefs that there are other people is incorrigible. In other words, I believe that my belief could not be corrected, I could not give up that belief.” But you see, that’s a psychological fact that “I can’t give up that belief”. The fact that I can’t give it up doesn’t tell me anything about reality. A person who is suffering from DTs can’t give up his belief that there are snakes on the bed either! Its incorrigible for him, he sees them, but that doesn’t mean that there are snakes on the bed. In addition to this phenomenological weakness, this version of foundationalism suffers great embarrassment by the faulty and conflicting ways in which common sense beliefs are identified and enumerated by people. That is to say if you were to go to any local university this afternoon and just take any random one-hundred people and say “Tell me what your common sense beliefs are, the one’s that you just can’t give up. . .” its going to be interesting to see the great diversity and in some cases conflict between these allegedly common sense beliefs. They’re not so “common-sense” after all.

And so then we look at another possibility which is, I think a very big one in Christian apologetical circles today: (2) Perceptual Foundationalism – Perceptual foundationalism says that infallible basic propositions which transcend beliefs imposed on us and which give an objective depiction of things are found in sincere, first-person, present-tense reports of a perceptual experience. Example: “I now seem to be seeing a yellow pencil.” O.k. So there’s a first-person, present-tense perceptual experience. Those who hold this view believe that the absence of any mediating agency between the knowing person and the private psychological state of which he is aware of guarantees that misinterpretation of his sensory experiences are precluded and therefore one cannot be mislead by those experiences. That is to say, the strength of a perceptual foundation is its non-inferential character. I’m not drawing any inference when I say, “I see white chalk” or so it’s said. I’m not sure that I hold to that view but that is the claim being made. The weakness of depending upon these allegedly non-inferential certitudes however is far more compelling to me.

Let me tell you a few of these weaknesses. Perceptual foundations for knowledge are not universal because some people don’t have perceptions, right? There’s some people that are blind for instance. And, even forgetting that, not every use of perception turns out to be veridical. Even people who can see are subject to optical illusions. And our perceptions are not defeasible[4] by reference for instance to a “normal perceiver under normal circumstances.” That is, somebody says, “Now wait a minute, what I mean is: perceptions are foundational when a normal perceiver under normal circumstances sees things.” But then what you have to go back and do is define what a normal perceiver is, and what normal circumstances are, and you have to be able to determine that you are a normal perceiver under such normal circumstances. But what is it that makes circumstances abnormal? How many factors are there that affect the supposed normality of our perceptions? Does anybody in the room know? I don’t know and I don’t think any epistemologist knows! The more we learn about the use of the human eye, the more we learn about psychology . . . we learn all the time, these factors. For me to say for absolutely certainty that I am a normal perceiver under normal circumstances, I have to be able to check off all the invalidating circumstances and say, “none of them apply to me so now I am in fact seeing white chalk.” Now do I know right now that I’m not dreaming this lecture? I mean, I had to prepare the lecture. Maybe it’s really Friday night and I’m dreaming that I’m giving this lecture and perceiving the chalk!

Now there are ways to check that right? O.k., let’s say that I’ve checked that one and I can get rid of it but now how many others factors might there be? Maybe something I’ve ate for lunch has affected my field of vision, maybe I hit my head getting out of my car, maybe I’ve got a tumor pressing on a particular portion of my brain causing hallucinations and on, and on, and on it goes. Perceptual foundations just aren’t the sorts of things that qualify as foundations, even if you do generally trust your senses. And then the problems of illusion and delusion preclude our certainty that some external object which is appearing to us in the way that we are perceiving is in fact external.

O.k., here’s an example: If I were to have everybody stare at the lights in this room for 30 seconds without looking away and then we turn off the lights do you know what happens? You’re going to see a red afterglow. Does that mean that there’s something red in the ceiling? No, it means that chemical reactions are taking place in your eyeball and brain where you have this sensory impression. So it goes to show that our perceptions are not always veridical anyway.

Of course, to speak counter-factually, even if pure and infallible perceptual foundations could be acquired, what would be the secure or reliable method of reasoning by which we could build a system of thought outward from the foundations? Assume again, contrary to everything I’ve told you that we can get perceptual foundations. O.k., this is a foundation . . . one perception: this is white chalk. Are you going to be able to live with that one foundation so as to construct a valid workable worldview? The perception of white chalk isn’t much to base a life and worldview on. Most people are going want to take a few of these foundational perceptions and build a system outward until you get something a little more interesting. You know like, “I love you.” It’d be nice to get from “this is white chalk” to “I love you” someday . . . and other things in between like “What is justice?” and “What is man?” and all the other key things that keep Western culture moving right along. How do I move from “This is white chalk and that is white chalk” to other more important premises? Somebody says, “Well, we use deduction right?” But deduction will not allow us to accept the most elementary, universal propositions about physical objects based on the simple basis of particular perceptions.

You see if I’m going to use deduction in an attempt to develop certainty about my perceptions, then we can show that this is impossible using the standard example of deductive reasoning:

P1 – All men are mortal.

P2 – Socrates is a man,

C – Therefore, Socrates is a mortal.

Now in order to do this one simple transaction in deduction though I’d have to know what? Answer: that all men are mortal. Now how would I know that all men are mortal? You’d say, “Well I’ve seen a man die” and I’d say, “Yeah, well so, one man died.” “But I’ve seen ten men, I’ve seen a hundred, I’ve seen a thousand men die.” Does that mean that all men are mortal? You see, we’re being tied down to the foundation of our perceptions. I don’t for a moment doubt that all men are mortal but when somebody says “I’m a perceptual foundationalist” I then say, “Well have you perceived that all men are mortal?” Now what if everybody in the whole world died except that one man who is the perceptual foundationalist? Could he then say “all men are mortal”? No, he couldn’t then say all men are mortal until he died. But then you see he wouldn’t be there to say it!

And so, you have problems with perceptual foundationalism because deduction is not possible. Somebody says, “O.k., we won’t use deduction, we’ll use induction, what’s often called probabilistic reasoning.” Allright. [example of induction to follow] “Every crow that I’ve seen so far is black. And therefore very probably the next crow that I see will be black.” That’s probabalism, or what’s called inductive reasoning. The difficulty with probabalism or inductive reasoning, is that it cannot show that’s its required assumption is known with certainty nor that it is even probably true. What’s the required assumption with probabalism? The required assumption is that there’s uniformity in experience and nature. If there is no uniformity in the world then it doesn’t make any sense to extrapolate from past instances to future instances. Take the example I just gave, “Past crows have been black, the next crow, the future crow will be black as well.” That doesn’t make a bit of sense, unless of course, nature is uniform. Now, if you’re a perceptual foundationalist how can you know that all of nature is uniform? So, the foundation of induction and therefore, of science has been lost as well. Historically, this problem has been called by philosophers The Problem of Induction.

Foundationalism is basically on the downward slide modern epistemology. Those people who think you find certainty by relating your propositions to a secure foundation have not been able to carry out the task and you have a lot of people moving back in the direction of epistemological relativism. However, another approach that has been attempted in the 20^th century and that is pragmatism.

Pragmatism

Pragmatism basically says that we know something is certain if it gives us success in achieving our goals. In reality, pragmatists say “We don’t care about certainty. Certainty is just an intellectual game that’s been played in the history of Western philosophy. We don’t need what’s called epistemological certainty, all we need is success. We need success in building theories that will help us control our environment or achieve the goals that we set for ourselves.” So, let’s say you have epistemological theories X, Y, and Z and it turns out that only theory Y leads to success in what I want to do. If that’s the only one that will give me success or if it leads to more success than Z or X do, relatively speaking, then we prefer theory Y or methodology Y as it would be called for a pragmatist. So we give up the traditional questions of epistemology: “What is truth? What is certainty? How do we know what we know?” We give up those questions in favor of questions such as: “How are we going to get along best in the world? What method is going to gain for us the things we want to gain?” Now, to avoid arbitrariness and question begging, the pragmatist has to necessarily appeal to some external justification for their position, forcing them to go outside of epistemology and do what is called “naturalizing” their procedures to reduce epistemology to another branch of science. This justification for their position must be descriptive in nature claiming that a given agent succeeds in getting to his given goals if he adheres to a given system or method. And there are a number of possibilities. There are those who say that we must naturalize epistemology to psychology. Others say we should naturalize it to biology. Still others say that we ought to naturalize it to sociology. Some say we should naturalize it to anthropology.

Now, the trouble with all of these naturalizing epistemologies, all these pragmatic approaches (which reduce to one branch of descriptive science or another), is that they answer the request for a justification of science by skirting the question. Epistemology is a normative endeavor, it’s not simply a descriptive enterprise that says, “This agent using this method will achieve that goal.” The quest for justification is an evaluative quest just because the alternative goals need to be appreciated as to their respective values. In other words, if you tell me, “Use that method which gives you the best success in accomplishing your goals” then the question becomes, “Well, which goals should I have?” Should they be anthropological, biological, psychological, aesthetic? What are the proper goals in life? The pragmatist forces us to know what the meaning of man, the world, and life is. And yet, if anything, that is the theory that tells us, “All those are silly questions!” And so the pragmatist ends up without justification for knowledge either! And now, you may be saying, “What are we going to do? Nobody has any answers! Look, we have to have certainty. Relativism’s self-refuting, foundationalism is in disrepute, pragmatism ignores the question, so what’s left?” Well, by God’s grace, I want to offer an alternative, I want to offer Christian Transcendentalism as an answer. Now, I’m going to have to explain what transcendentalism is for you.

Christian Transcendentalism

Christian transcendentalism is not a theory of life propounded by Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller and others from the end of the 19^th century. Christian Transcendentalism is a theory of knowledge and life that refers to the transcendentals of knowledge. I’m going to give you another word for transcendentals here. A transcendental is a precondition. And according to transcendentalists throughout history (Christian and non-Christian) there are what we call “preconditions of knowledge.” Preconditions of knowledge are certain things must be satisfied before knowledge would become possible. For instance, scientific knowledge takes for one of its preconditions the uniformity of nature. Also, logical knowledge takes as its precondition the absoluteness of logical laws. Now that’s an interesting thing. According to logic, there must be absolute, unchanging, laws. According to science, there must be non-absolute, or contingent, changing particulars. I could go on and talk about ethics and anthropology and other fields too, but there are certain preconditions you see to do science, or logic, or psychology, or anthropology, or what have you.

The Christian says, (or the Christian who is a transcendentalist, or what might be called a presuppositionalist) says that only Christianity provides the preconditions for knowledge. Only Christianity provides the preconditions for knowledge. Somebody at this point might say, “Now wait a minute. Why doesn’t a person who is not a Christian, an unbeliever, just say, ‘Well my view of the world is that there are absolute, unchanging laws. That the most fundamental thing you can say about the world is that it’s law-like. Everything happens according to law-like explanations.’” Then I’d say, “O.k., that’s fine, so you save logic.” But now if everything is absolute, and unchanging, and law-like, what happens to contingent, changing, particulars? Apparently there’s no such thing as history, or freedom, or humanity, or science! And then he says, “O.k., I didn’t mean that it was absolute, and unchanging, and law-like, no, no. The universe is radically contingent and individual. I really believe that the world is contingent and changing and full of particulars.” You say, “O.k., that’s great, you save science but then there goes logic! You don’t have any absolute, unchanging laws if you only have contingent particulars. Now, the unbeliever will then run back and forth (and again we can add other things here like ethics) trying to do his best to bring all of this together. But it turns out, I believe, that no other worldview offers the preconditions of science, logic, and morality.

Now, if that is correct (I know you wouldn’t expect me in one hour to be able to offer a thorough defense of the Christian faith), but I’m talking about the structure of our defense. If we take a transcendental approach to the defense of Christianity we end up not just defending the truth of Christianity but what? We also end up defending the truth of science, the truth of logic, and the truth of morals. And that is what we are interested in: searching for certainty. Now I have a quote I want to give you, which is not by a Christian it’s by a secular epistemologist, but I think he has it right when he says, (This is Harry Frankfurt by the way), he says, “The claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable is justified whenever a denial of the claim would violate the conditions or presuppositions of rational inquiry.” I’ll say that again: “The claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable is justified whenever a denial of the claim would violate the conditions or presuppositions of rational inquiry.”

So we’re looking for certainty. Somebody comes along and says, “I think certainty is found in my perceptions” and then you give all the arguments against that. Somebody says, “I think certainty is found in common-sense beliefs” and you know the arguments against that. Somebody says, “I don’t think we need certainty, we just need pragmatic success” and you know the arguments against that. But now somebody comes along and he says, “I think what is certain is what the Bible teaches.” O.k. and now everybody gets done laughing and saying “Oh you silly little fundy, you can’t possibly believe the Bible? But you say, “O.k.” But now if I start with my worldview you’ll notice that I can first of all defend the dignity of man because man is made in the image of God it isn’t right to murder people, rape them, kidnap them, steal their belongings after hitting them over the head with a claw hammer, and all the rest are morally wrong and offensive. And these are the sorts of things you want to defend on a moral [basis], and Christians have a philosophically defensible way of doing that. Not only that, Christians can defend the progress and processes associated with science. We can defend the possibility of science. We can defend the uniformity of nature. We can defend the absoluteness of logic. On and on and on it goes. So you may laugh Mr. Atheist but after all, I’ve got a worldview that stands up whereas yours cannot. O.k., so we have at least one contender. We have one worldview (in terms of the biblical presuppositions) that can make sense out of all these other things, [that] can offer the preconditions of rational inquiry.

Now, remember that Frankfurt tells us, The claim that a basis for doubt is inconceivable is justified whenever a denial of the claim violates the preconditions of rational inquiry. I’m saying, “I think that the Bible is wrong is inconceivable.” I think the Bible is indubitable. I think it’s infallible. Now, does that mean that somebody should believe it just because I say it? Am I saying, “The Bible claims to be infallible therefore it is infallible”? No! I’m saying that the Bible is infallible and when you deny it you haven’t got any other foundation for knowledge. You can try to deny it, and obviously the history of man has shown his many attempts to get a foundation for knowledge apart from submitting to the living and true God, but what does Proverbs say? Proverbs says, the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord (Pro. 1:7). Respect for your maker, reverence before the word of God. That’s the beginning! In Hebrew it is the rosch of knowledge, it is the head. It is the first point of knowledge. And the book of Proverbs goes on to say that those who do not love me hate knowledge and wisdom. They destroy it. When Paul talks about the Christian faith in 1 Timothy chapter 6 he tells Timothy to defend the faith against those claims of false-knowledge. false-knowledge! Yes, unbelievers know things, but its pseudo-knowledge because it can’t account for what is known. It denies the preconditions of rationality. And so when I claim that the search for certainty is satisfied in Christianity, I’m saying that those who deny the Christian worldview, have denied the presuppositions of rational inquiry.

Now, what I had told you before we can come back to. There are two approaches to defending the faith. One approach says “Let’s be foundationalists and our foundations are going to be scientific truths or historical truths or something.” And since those are our standards, now what we have to do as Christians is to show that Christianity passes the test with an A+. O.k., you’re a historicist and now I’m going to go to you and say, “Look Jesus rose from the dead here’s all this evidence.” Or if you’re a scientist I’m going to show you that evolution is not true. Or, if whatever it may be, I take my standards from somebody else, here are these standards supplied by say, a secular or autonomous world and I say, “Christianity passes.” That’s one approach. The pragmatist says, “I’m a Christian because it works and I think that what’s supposed to work in life is getting along with your wife and be sure that you’re going to go to heaven when you die and that happens when I’m a Christian.” Somebody else says, “Well I’m not too interested in getting along with my wife I’m not even going to get married and I don’t think there even is an afterlife.” So what does a pragmatist say to that? He says, “Well, but it works for me.” And you see that reduces to relativism. So that approach to Christianity is not going to help. What you have left is saying that there are no standards. No standards are possible without Christianity. It is the sina qua non of knowledge.

Interestingly in Matthew the 7^th Chapter, Jesus our Lord teaches a story, which I guess every Sunday School child learns in musical form about the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. We all know that story. We forget sometimes that Jesus, when He concluded the parable says, “and My word is the rock.” Those who are wise, build their lives, their outlook, their perspectives, their worldviews on the rock of Jesus’ word. And those who don’t build their lives on His word are fools! Is it any surprise therefore that in 1 Corinthians 1 when Paul goes over his apologetic he says, “Where is the wise, where is the scribe, where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Cor. 1:25) For in its own wisdom it rejects what it takes to be foolish (the preaching of the cross), but Paul says that we know that that’s the wisdom of God. So, there are worldviews in collision. That’s the situation right now. There is the secular worldview, the naturalistic worldview, the existentialist worldview, the relativist worldview, any number of options, and they stand over and against the Christian worldview. How do you defend the Christian worldview? I suggest you defend it by saying, “You can’t know anything for sure unless Christianity is true.” Or, if I’ve kind of lost you for all this lecture I’m going to put it in one sentence o.k.? In this one sentence at least you can leave understanding I’m sure.

**The best proof of the Christian God’s existence, is that without Him you can’t prove anything ** [Repeated] The best proof of the Christian God’s existence, is that without Him you can’t prove anything.

That’s just a real pointed way of saying that the Christian worldview is indubitable because it provides the preconditions of knowledge and that I take to be the certainty of the Christian faith.

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[1] Moritz Schlick, Foundation of Knowledge, 1934.

[2] Autonomy comes from the Greek autonomia, which literally means “self-law.”

[3] Incorrigible means “incapable of being corrected or amended; not reformable.” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incorrigible

[4] Defeasible means “capable of being annulled or made void - a defeasible claim. http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=defeasible