Free-for-all

JL: So Steve, give it a shot. Harmonize Frank's statements for us all to see that you are a fair minded person, someone your readers can trust to properly evaluate what we say at DC. Go on. Try.

Why should I spell out the obvious to you? You can do it, can't you? If not, it calls into question your objectivity when it comes to the Bible, now doesn't it?

SH:

i) Of course, this is sophistical. To say that if I can’t harmonize Frank’s statements, this raises doubts about my objectivity merely begs the question by assuming what Loftus needs to prove, to wit: that Frank’s statements are harmonious.

ii) And it’s equally sophistical in another respect. Loftus is trying to pole-vault from my interpretation of Frank to my interpretation of Scripture so that he can discredit my interpretation of Scripture without actually having to show where I go wrong.

iii) As to Frank, this is what I have to say. He sounds like he comes out of a charismatic background. At the very least, he operates with a quasi-charismatic criterion.

Now, Pentecostalism is especially prone to raising false expectations that are quickly and inevitably dashed by harsh experience.

Some charismatics are more sophisticated (e.g. Deere, Fee, Grudem, Keener, Storms, Turner), but many charismatics operate with a magic carpet worldview, and when their magic carpet takes a nosedive, their faith takes a nosedive as well.

Pentecostalism cultivates fideism because it’s generally based on experience rather than reason or Scripture.

As I say, there are exceptions, but I’m talking about the rank-and-file.

So Frank’s experience is stereotypical of a certain theological tradition.

iv) Many Christians are fideistic for the simple reason that many Christians are not intellectuals.

By the same token, many unbelievers are not intellectuals. The average unbeliever is no better at presenting a well-reasoned case for his infidelity than the average believer for his faith.

v) But to say that a given Christian is fideistic is not to say that Christianity is fideistic.

It’s just a distinction between intellectuals and non-intellectuals.

Yet it would be perfectly absurd to say that Christians like Adams, Alston, Anselm, Aquinas, Archer, Augustine, Barnett, Berkeley, Blomberg, Bock, Calvin, Carson, Clark, Craig, Dembski, Edwards, Frame, Habermas, Helm, Keener, Kitchen, Metzger, Montgomery, Moreland, Owen, Pascal, Plantinga, Poythress, Swinburne, Van Til, Warfield, Wright, or Yamauchi (to name a few) are fideistic.

DM: Are you seriously unaware that the entire Catholic church, minus a few small parts, as well as huge swaths of Protestant denominations, live with the harmony of admitting common descent is a fact and believing that God exists? Perhaps you'd like to talk to one of those billion or so Christians about it, if you don't trust me?

SH:

i) What would be the point of talking to a Catholic or Protestant theistic evolutionist merely because he’s Catholic or Protestant?

At most, it would only be profitable to talk with a Catholic or Protestant theistic evolutionist who has some professional expertise in a field of science that intersects with evolutionary theory and ask him what his evidence is for believing in evolution.

ii) Danny subscribes to naturalistic evolution, not theistic evolution. Danny regards theistic evolution as false. So why does he continue to trot out theistic evolution as if it were some sort of defeater for an anti-evolutionary Christian?

NB: Aplogetics are used to try and 'bolster' this faith for some reason, although why Christians fear to rely on 'faith' I do not understand.

SH:

i) Christians are not all alike. Some Christians have an intuitive sense of God’s presence, or a personal experience of God’s providence such that they have no need of apologetics to bolster their faith. God is more real to them than any atheistic objection.

ii) But it’s also misleading to say that Christians rely on their faith. Faith doesn’t supply the grounds for believing in any thing. Faith is instrumental.

They believe in God, revealed in Scripture and experience.

iii) It’s also possible for a professing believer to have his faith shaken because his theology is defective, and his defective theological fosters a false expectation.

iv) Likewise, it’s possible for a professing believer to have his faith shaken due to some traumatic personal tragedy.

Here the crisis of faith is emotional rather than intellectual. But we’re emotional creatures as well as rational creatures, and grief can eclipse reason.

NB:

And the Mormons will give their "true answers."

And the JWs will give their "true answers."

And the Muslims, and Hindus, and Pagans, and Buddhists, etc...

All religions with their "special revelations" and "personal experiences."

All with holy men/women, prophets, and teachers.

All with their stories of miracles.

And interestingly enough, most of them with their followers that happen to be the same exact faith that their parents/geography have dictated.

SH: two basic problems:

i) I’ve repeatedly dealt with the argument from social conditioning. This suffers from a couple of flaws:

a) If sound, it would cut both ways since we can apply social conditioning to atheism as well as theism.

b) It greatly oversimplifies the actual distribution pattern. I’ve been over this ground several times before:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/02/debunking-loftawful-bunk.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/02/social-conditioning.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/02/god-can-damn-well-damn-anyone-he-damn.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/02/to-ends-of-earth.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006_02_12_triablogue_archive.html

ii) This is a stock objection raised by unbelievers who have obviously not done any serious study in comparative religion. For if they had, they’d know that not all religions claim to be revealed religions. Not all religious lay claim to miraculous attestation.

Also, if you mouse over to my topical index on the sidebar, you’ll see that I’ve discussed other cults and alternative religions.

NB: Personally, it all boils down to that dreaded "F" word: Faith.

Just admit it, you have faith, because you don't (and can't!) KNOW that your God is the right one.

SH: As I already indicated, this is a deficient definition of faith.

i)In Scripture, the distinction is not between faith and knowledge but, at most, between knowledge by description (testimony) and knowledge by acquaintance.

ii)Moreover, Scripture draws a broad distinction between general and special revelation.

iii)Furthermore, there is also a distinction between reflective and prereflective knowledge.

A Christian enjoys s a tacit knowledge of God. This is intuitive or pretheoretical. What Cardinal Newman called the illative sense.

It counts as genuine knowledge, but first-order knowledge. Faith based on the raw evidence.

Beyond this is second-order knowledge. Here the evidence is turned into formal argumentation.

In first-order knowledge, the Christian has his reasons—but in second-order knowledge, the Christian can give his reasons (or some of them, at least).

NB: So, tell me, Steve, or Jeff, how do you KNOW what you will believe in 10 years. I don't think a person can "choose" to believe something, and really believe it. I can't "make" myself believe. And that fits in with your theology, right?

So, how do you KNOW what you'll believe in 10 years?

SH: Nature boy is posing a hypothetical. In the nature of the case, such a question is unanswerable, not because there is no possible answer, but because, being a hypothetical question, it is open to more than one hypothetical answer.

A question of fact only admits one factual answer. But a hypothetical question is not a question of fact. Rather, a hypothetical question is inherently open-ended.

A hypothetical question is not a question about what will be, but about what might be. It presupposes a state of affairs in which things might have been otherwise than how they actually turn out.

So this is a trick question. Nature boy may not have meant it to be a trick question. But that’s what it amounts to.