Apologetics

The Deliberate Protestant

A family friend asked me to comment on an article entitled “The Accidental Catholic”, which was recently posted on the Called to Communion blog (run by converts to Roman Catholicism from Reformed churches). Below are my comments (edited and slightly expanded).


The author’s basic argument can be summarized simply as follows:

  1. If Sola Scriptura were correct and the Protestant churches were led by the Holy Spirit, there wouldn’t be many doctrinal disagreements between Protestant churches.
  2. But there are many doctrinal disagreements between Protestant churches.
  3. Therefore, it can’t be the case that Sola Scriptura is correct and the Protestant churches are led by the Holy Spirit.

The most serious problem with the argument is that there’s no good reason to accept the first premise.  Here are some reasons why, along with some other related comments:

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TAG and Epistemic Certainty

A commenter asks why I don’t endorse the claim that the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG) gives us epistemic certainty (which I take to mean that the argument delivers a conclusion that has maximal epistemic warrant and could not be rationally doubted). After all, if TAG proves Christian theism “by the impossibility of the contrary”, as many of its advocates have claimed, wouldn’t it follow that TAG’s conclusion is epistemically certain?

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No Dilemma for the Proponent of the Transcendental Argument

The editor of Philosophia Christi has kindly permitted me to post on my website a preprint of my article “No Dilemma for the Proponent of the Transcendental Argument: A Response to David Reiter”. The article is scheduled to appear in the Summer 2011 issue along with a short rejoinder from David. It was a profitable exchange, and it’s gratifying that Philosophia Christi considers TAG to be worthy of critical scholarly discussion. Van Tilians should also be thankful for sympathetic, well-informed critics like David. May his tribe increase!

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Stephen Hawking Versus God

The news outlets are abuzz with reports of some provocative claims made in Stephen Hawking’s latest book, The Grand Design, which is due for release on Tuesday. For obvious reasons I haven’t yet read the book, so I don’t know the broader context of his claims or how he supports them. However, since the claims in question have been widely quoted, and several folk have already asked me about them, I’ll offer a few tentative comments (with all the necessary caveats assumed).

Here are Hawking’s statements as reported by the Telegraph (and by numerous other outlets):

Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.

It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.

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Interview with Christ the Center

I was recently interviewed for the Christ the Center program by the good folk at Reformed Forum, and they’ve just posted the audio on their website. I’ve enjoyed and benefited from listening to a number of their podcasts over the last couple of years, so I was honored to be invited to contribute to one of them. Among other things we discussed presuppositional apologetics, John Frame’s perspectivalism, and my book on theological paradox.

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The Infidel Delusion

My friends over at Triablogue have written a 250-page response to The Christian Delusion (which they’ve naturally entitled The Infidel Delusion). I’ve only had time to scan through it today, but it looks to be a pretty devastating rebuttal of a book praised by atheist philosopher Michael Martin as “arguably the best critique of the Christian faith the world has ever known” (a commendation I won’t contest).

The Christian Delusion purports to do to Christianity what The God Delusion did to theism. Well, if that was the ambition, apparently it’s a stunning success — but not in quite the way its authors think. It makes a lot of noise and kicks up a lot of dust, but once it’s spent the Christian worldview has nary a scratch. In fact, the contest between Team Loftus and Team Hays rather reminds me of the following classic scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark:

Anyway, I commend The Infidel Delusion to you, dear reader, and you can make your own evaluation. It will make for an informative and entertaining read, and unlike the book it rebuts, The Infidel Delusion won’t cost you a penny.

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Presuppositionalism and Frame’s Epistemology

P&R Publishing have kindly granted me permission to make available on my website the essay I contributed to the festschrift in honor of John Frame: “Presuppositionalism and Frame’s Epistemology,” in Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame, ed. John J. Hughes (P&R, 2009), 431-459.

The essay didn’t turn out quite the way I’d hoped — you know how ideas always seem better in your head before they make it onto paper — but after looking over it again I’ve concluded it’s not as bad as I thought when I submitted it! It’s basically a defense of Frame’s epistemology and presuppositionalism, with some concrete apologetic application.

Anyway, the festschrift is packed full of insightful and stimulating material, both from Dr. Frame and from the other 36 (count ’em) contributors. If you don’t have a copy, get one. P&R Publishing have generously offered a 50% discount (yes, really) on the price of the book for any readers of this blog who order before March 31, either via their website or by telephone (1-800-631-0094), and use the discount code ANATH. (If you post this info elsewhere, please link back to here.)

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The Morality of the New Atheism

When it comes to ethical theory, the apologists for the New Atheism are utilitarians almost to a man, if not actually to a man. They endorse some version of the “principle of utility”: what is morally right is what results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

So what makes people happy? As it turns out, studies consistently show a correlation between religiosity and happiness. (Go here for one recent example.) Religious people typically enjoy happier, more contented, more satisfying lives than non-religious people in comparable circumstances. Yet the New Atheists, by publishing books scathingly critical of religion, are attempting (one assumes) to persuade people to abandon religion. So if the aforementioned studies are reliable, the polemics of the New Atheists — if successful — will most likely reduce the net happiness of the human race. Thus, according to their own ethical theory, they are morally wrong to write and publish their anti-religion tracts.

One might reply that the New Atheists write against religion because they’re firmly convinced that religious beliefs are false, and it’s more important to believe what is true than to believe what makes one happy. This is surely correct, but we should note that this response constitutes a de facto rejection of utilitarian ethics. According to the principle of utility, what’s morally right depends only on what makes us happy, and that principle must apply to our beliefs just as it does to any other aspect of our lives. If certain beliefs increase overall human happiness then we should act so as to promote those beliefs, regardless of whether they happen to be true or false. Rather than opposing what they deride as religious mythology, the New Atheists ought to follow Plato in championing the “noble lie”.

Another possible response would be to argue that although the beliefs of religious folk may well make them happier, those same beliefs make life miserable for everyone else (not least the New Atheists). But as we all know, the non-religious constitute a minority of the world population. Wouldn’t it be morally preferable, on utilitarian principles, for this minority to suffer some relatively minor irritations for the sake of the happiness of the majority? Whatever historical atrocities committed by religious fanatics one might drag up at this point, it would be hard to make a credible case that the total unhappiness represented by these outlying cases outweighs the total happiness enjoyed by the vast number of religious believers in the world as a consequence of their religious convictions. We might also note that the prime targets of religious extremists are usually adherents of other religious traditions, not atheists and agnostics. (The prime targets of secularist extremists, on the other hand, are invariably religious believers, as 20th-century history and current world affairs illustrate only too well.)

So the problem remains. By their own moral lights, wouldn’t the New Atheists do better to suffer in silence?

In fact, they could do even better than that: they could get themselves some religion. Who knows? We might even see them crack a smile or two.

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