Fear and Trembling

Dr. K. Scott Oliphint ‘s penetrating analysis of a spat within the atheist community can be found at this link . Reason alone simply cannot provide an adequate framework for ethical decision-making. Dr. Oliphint, professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, has been doing some strong work in apologetics from the presuppositional point of view (now referred to as covenantal apologetics ) at the Reformation21 blog . Dr. Oliphint also defends the presuppositional position at The Gospel Coalition in a debate summarized at this link . I recommend Dr. Oliphint’s work because it brings much needed clarity to the subject.

How do we know what we know? How do we know what is true? How do we evaluate one idea against another? How do we interpret the information our senses provide us? What do we see? Hear? Touch? Smell? Taste? These questions fascinate me. I first began to ask questions like this as I studied Human Factors Engineering (HFE) in graduate school. HFE is a branch of engineering that studies how a human being interacts with their environment, usually with respect to how we obtain information and how we perform work. We looked at basic types of mistakes that people make, the way we obtain information from our senses, the way we process that information, the way we decide to act, and the way we activate machine controls to act on that processed information. The field includes ergonomics , but it includes much more than that. One of the things we learned right off the bat was that the way we interact with our environment is a process. Think of a black box with arrows going into the left side fo...

Hawking and Mlodinow’s book The Grand Design  is fascinating. It is a look into theoretical physics that I appreciate. One comment on page 180 seems to be getting all of the press: “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to envoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” This problematic statement is seen as a major victory for atheism. But, I note the comment on page 181: “…perhaps the true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes [the universe].” Note the reference to logic.  The abstract laws of logic shape the way all of us think. Take one for instance: the law of non-contradiction. It says that something can not be both A and Non-A at the same time, in the same relationship, and in the same sense. This law cannot be denied. To deny it is to affirm it. If you say, “The law of non-contra...

I checked a copy of The Grand Design by Hawking and Mlodinow out of the library yesterday. After all of the fuss around the internet and in the media, I had to have a look. (See articles here , here , here , and here . From what I have read on the subject so far, I have two basic questions for Hawking and his proponents. You have said that something comes from nothing. The cat is out of the bag. You have finally admitted your position. This is a violation of the most fundamental law of science: “Out of nothing, nothing comes.” Positing that the universe follows certain laws does not help because those laws describe the way the universe behaves. How do you have laws to describe what does not exist? What if we grant your argument? What if the universe came into being because it follows strict natural laws? Where did those laws come from? The best explanation for laws like that is design. The universe behaves in a predictable fashion because God designed it that way. It seems ...

God establishes reason, and without Him, we have no reason to be reasonable. We reason by the laws of logic combined with facts we observe. For example, the Law of Non-contradiction, that A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same relationship. These abstract, conceptual principles must be accounted for if any discussion on any topic is to take place. Only God can account for these laws. His thinking upholds ours. If the laws of logic are based on human thinking, then we have to realize that people are different and the laws may differ from person to person. They are no longer absolute. Some particular examples follow. If the laws of logic are just social conventions, then they are not absolute, and they can be ignored at will. My social network is, after all, different from yours. How do we avoid the conclusion that all of our thinking is not the result of mere instinctive reactions to our environment? Since our environments are all different, we would all reach dif...

Some conversations I’ve recently had over at The Atheist Experience made me think about some implications of certain of God’s attributes, namely His knowledge and His immutability. God is unchanging in His being, character (what theologians call His perfections), purposes, and promises. Yet God does act. He does feel emotions. And He acts and feels differently in response to different situations. God’s unchanging nature means that His knowledge does not change. He never learns new things or forgets things. He knows all things past, present and future, actual and possible, and knows them all equally vividly. This is why the universe follows logical laws . Logic helps us see how everything fits together (how facts interrelate). We can know it all fits together because God knows everything. There must be truth, and it must all logically inter-relate because it can be known in God’s mind vividly. In a sense, it can be know all at the same ‘time,’ so it must all be logical. God’s...

I am a Master’s degreed industrial engineer. I make my living by using a problem-solving method called Six Sigma . In short, this is a detailed problem solving methodology based on statistical methods. I spend my days looking at manufacturing and service processes and analyzing their performance with 2-sample t-tests, ANOVA tables, Chi-squared tables, Factoral Experiments, and many other scientific methods of designed experimentation. I have grown to see many things in life through the window of hypothesis testing , the most often used scientific research method. I have a supreme respect for the scientific method, but there are things that science cannot prove. It must assume certain foundational principles. Science assumes an external world that is orderly. By orderly, I mean a world that is organized according to basis principles. This assumption cannot be proven by science because the only way that science can explain order is to find more order. The law or theory is explained by an...

I have been reading an interesting book by Victor J. Stenger that I would like to interact with over my next few posts. (Stenger, Victor J. God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does not Exist , Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2007). To quote Stenger: “The people performing the study, that is, those taking and analyzing the data, must do so without any prejudgment of how the results should come out.” (24) Is there any such thing as an unbiased person? Can anyone claim to be completely objective in his or her pursuit of truth? Greg Bahnsen notes that : …a person's most fundamental beliefs (or presuppositions) determine what he or she will accept as evidence and determine how that evidence will be interpreted. … Our presuppositions about the nature of reality and knowledge will control what we accept as evidence and how we view it. Even more interesting is Stenger’s reference to computer simulation. Computer programs help us understand “how simple systems can se...

An interesting article by Jonathan Barlow over at CRTA concludes as follows: I would do well at this point to break away and leave Dawkins in the morass of his purely contingent universe in which not even logic, science, and morality make any sense. For all of his huff and puff against faith, Dawkins lives in a drafty house of pure scientism that he has sealed up with faith -- faith in logic, of whose foundations he can give no account, faith in induction, upon which he builds science, and faith in the evolving human brain and the evolving human society to more often produce Martin Luther Kings than John Wayne Gacys. Strong words. Other links on the site back up these claims.

Logic and Thought Have you ever spent an afternoon thinking about thinking? Most people I know would quickly answer with a resounding “no.” Some would throw in an expletive. I am afraid I am the type of person who thinks about thinking, and I am grateful to know I am not alone . One aspect of thinking is our ability to determine the internal consistency of ideas. We need to be able to know whether our thinking method itself is accurate. This is the realm of formal logic. Formal logic has always fascinated me. The laws of logic shape the way we think. They are an open window to the Christian God’s world. Take one for instance: the law of non-contradiction. It says that something can not be both A and Non-A at the same time, in the same relationship, and in the same sense. This law cannot be denied. To deny it is to affirm it. If you say, “The law of non-contradiction does not apply,” you could mean, “The law of non-contradiction does indeed apply.” The meanings would be the s...

How do we know what we know? How do we know what is true? How do we evaluate one idea against another? How do we interpret the information our senses provide us? What do we see? Hear? Touch? Smell? Taste? These questions fascinate me. I first began to ask questions like this as I studied Human Factors Engineering (HFE) in graduate school. HFE is a branch of engineering that studies how a human being interacts with their environment, usually with respect to how we obtain information and how we perform work. We looked at basic types of mistakes that people make, the way we obtain information from our senses, the way we process that information, the way we decide to act, and the way we activate machine controls to act on that processed information. The field includes ergonomics , but it included much more than that. One of the things we learned right off the bat was that the way we interact with our environment is a process. Think of a black box with arrows going into the lef...

God establishes reason, and without Him, we do not have reasons for reasons. We reason by the laws of logic combined with facts we observe. For example, the Law of Non-contradiction, that A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same relationship. These abstract, conceptual principles must be accounted for if any discussion on any topic is to take place. Only the Christian God can account for these laws. His thinking upholds ours. If the laws of logic are based on human thinking, then we have to realize that people are different and the laws may differ from person to person. They are no longer absolute. Some particular examples follow. If the laws of logic are just social conventions, then they are not absolute, and they can be ignored at will. My social network is, after all, different from yours. How do we avoid the conclusion that all of our thinking is not the result of mere instinctive reactions to our environment? Since our environments are all different, we would...

Many contemporary believers do not feel the need to have a rational basis for their Christian faith. For example, Robert Webber’s comment in Ancient-Future Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1999, p. 185): …Christianity is not provable outside itself through the scientific method. One must come to the Christian faith believing that it is true and embrace it as such without any dependence on data outside the faith. Christianity requires trust, a believing embrace, a willingness to step inside its story apart from any dependence on historical, scientific, or rational persuasion. So, according to Webber, Christianity requires a blind leap of faith for entrance. I always think of the Indiana Jones movie where he must jump across a chasm not knowing whether there is anything to catch him as he falls. When he jumps, he falls onto a bridge that was hidden from view by exquisite camouflage. Is that kind of leap the requirement, or are there reasons to believe what we believe? Let’s l...