A response that I’ve seen is that atheism is not a worldview because it is not a belief, rather it is merely a “default position”. The rationale given sometimes compares belief in God to unicorns or some other such mythical animal, in the sense that unbelief in such things (or anything, really) is the default until convinced (or proven) otherwise.

While I can certainly see the reasonableness of this line of thinking and its general applicability, I wonder if it applies equally well to the question of God. There’s at least two reasons to think in this specific case things might be different. First, the vast majority of people throughout history have believed God (or gods) exist(s), a phenomenon which remains the case today. Should a belief be regarded as a default position when the majority believe the opposite?

And secondly, related to the above, if Richard Dawkins and those who agree with him are correct that human beings have evolved a natural proclivity towards belief in God(s) as some sort of survival/social assistance mechanism, should not belief in God be considered the default position, since we are supposedly “hard-wired” for such belief? Shouldn’t such naturally impelled belief be considered the default? Although I would agree with Dawkins that human beings seem to have an innate proclivity towards belief in God, I would suggest that there is different reason why so many people seem to have an innate awareness of God.

Christian:  The cosmological argument is strong evidence that God exists. If the universe was made, it needs a maker; if it was created, it needs a creator. That creator is God.

Skeptic:  Ah, but this merely raises the question “Who made God?” which Richard Dawkins himself asks in The God Delusion.^* It just pushes the question back one step further.

Christian:  This seems to me to be a category error; it confuses the uncreated creator with His created creation. God doesn’t need a maker because God was never made; He was and is eternally existing.

Skeptic:  That’s special pleading at best, hypocritical at worst. Why is it okay for God to be “eternal, uncreated” but not the universe?

Christian:  Because we have good reasons, both philosophical and scientific, that the universe is not eternal, whereas no such reasons exist to believe that God is so. God is not subject to the same limitations of the material world He created. The cosmological argument proposes not that everything requires a cause, but whatever begins to exist requires a cause; if God did not begin to exist (since there is no reason to believe He did, unlike the universe) He requires no cause.

Skeptic:  Even if we agree that the universe is not eternal, why must its cause be God? Why not some other explanation?

Christian:  Whatever created both time and space must transcend both time and space. Also, there are numerous other attributes which can be discerned about whatever created the universe that imply a personal entity (that is, it possesses volition among other things). So the creator of the universe is an entity which is beyond time and space yet still possesses certain attributes and is personal. This sounds to me a lot like God.

* In The God Delusion Dawkins is attempting to apply the question as a defeater to the design argument (p.109), not the cosmological argument (which Dawkins shockingly dismisses in less than a page). I’ve personally heard it applied more often to the cosmological argument, at least in the realm of Internet banter.

The question “If God made everything, who made God?” is like asking “Who made circles square?” It assumes a self-contradiction: that an uncreated Creator is a created creature. It extends the law about changing things -that every change needs a cause- beyond its limits, to the unchanging Source of change. God does not need a cause, or a maker, because he is not made or changed. He changes other things, but is not himself changed by anything. There is nothing that comes to be in him, nothing that needs a cause for its coming-into-being. (Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 105)

So essentially, Kreeft suggests that the question commits a category error; it overextends the general law that “things that exist require a maker” from the physical, created world, to the non-physical uncreated God.

A further question that may arise: “If God can be ‘uncreated & unchanging’, why not the universe too?” The answer would be that we have good reasons to believe that the universe is not eternal, as per the Cosmological Argument (including at least scientific and philosophical reasons), while no such restrictions would apply to God.

Today I read an editorial in The Calgary Herald titled Morgentaler deserves Order of Canada by Catherine Ford, ostensibly about the award, but in practice a summary defense of abortion. Let’s examine her arguments to see whether they make sense.

(Click below for my commentary; it’s a bit long to put on the blog’s front page)

For [ensuring the rights of Canadian women to safe and legal abortions] alone — for the right of all women to be regarded as capable of making a decision whether to bear children — Morgentaler not only merits the Order of Canada, he deserves whatever accolades Canadian women can bestow upon him.

The weasel-wording of the underlined portion obscures that abortion has nothing to do with “the right of all women to be regarded as capable of making a decision whether to bear children.” Certainly both sides of the issue agree that women should have the right to choose whether they will “bear children.” A woman certainly should choose whether they become pregnant or not; we are talking here however about abortion.

We owe him our gratitude for his unswerving commitment to the cause of women’s health.

Except, of course, for the health of all of the would-be women who were aborted. Death is usually considered less healthy than life.

Few other men have fought so vigorously and so single-mindedly for so long on a principle.

I hope that this statement is referring to the pro-choice abortion issue only, because as a blanket statement about the male gender it is either profoundly prejudiced or shockingly ignorant.

That principle is simple: All women should have the right of control over their own bodies.

I agree 100%. Women should have control over their own bodies. Again, few, if any, would disagree. And again the real question is obfuscated: Is the unborn merely a part of the woman’s body, like a hand or a lung?

This puts the burden of responsibility — the consequences of any decision — squarely on a woman’s shoulders. That is where it belongs. It is her responsibility to make the decisions about reproduction.

I agree that, in one sense, the consequences of the decision fall “squarely on a woman’s shoulders.” That’s the nature of ethical decisions. But all of our laws are based upon ethics; stealing is against the law because it is wrong to steal.

In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the existing law on abortion, ruling it unconstitutional. Madam Justice Bertha Wilson said a woman’s decision to have an abortion “deeply reflects the way the woman thinks about herself and her relationship to others and to society at large. It is not just a medical decision; it is a profound social and ethical one as well.“

I’m glad that we recognize that the issue of abortion is multifaceted; it is not just a logical conundrum, it is also a social and ethical issue.

It is also, she wrote, almost impossible for a man to contemplate the dilemma of a pregnant woman thinking about abortion. Pregnancy remains outside any man’s personal experience and, wrote Wilson, “he can relate to it only by objectifying it, thereby eliminating the subjective elements of the female psyche, which are at the heart of the dilemma.”

While recognizing that it is impossible for a man to truly emphasize with a woman regarding the emotional issues involved with pregnancy, the insinuation that a man can then have no voice regarding such issues is a non-sequitur. Clearly according to the author of the article a man can have a right view on abortion, since she agrees with Dr Morgentaler and applauds him for his view. Dismissal of a viewpoint based on its source (the genetic fallacy) is prejudiced, unfair, and unhelpful.

Those who do not approve or condone abortion are free not to have one. What they are not free to do is insist, because of their personal beliefs, abortion should not be available for a variety of reasons.

Let’s do a simple search-and-replace on these statements: Those who do not approve or condone murder are free not to murder anyone. What they are not free to do is insist, because of their personal beliefs, murder should not be available for a variety of reasons. Do you see why this sort of argument doesn’t work? Pro-life advocates do not argue that since they have a personal feeling that abortion is wrong “for them” that everyone else should change their own personal beliefs to cohere with theirs. The argument is that abortion is objectively wrong for everyone.

There are always a variety of reasons. Abortion for rape or incest might be permitted.

First we should note that, in any ethical issue (as the author has admitted the abortion issue is) there will be hard cases that are difficult to decide. However, the existence of such potentially morally ambiguous cases should not prevent us from deciding a general rule in the vast majority of cases. (Approximately 1% women cite rape as a reason for having an abortion, while less than 0.5% cite incest.) Moreover, the fact that certain unborn children may be unwanted (perhaps even for valid reasons) should not be enough to take their lives; the homeless or sick are often unwanted and burdens, but does that give us the right to take their lives?

But perhaps the author of the article is merely arguing for abortion in these few difficult cases like rape and incest?

One abortion — everyone should be allowed one “mistake” — could be considered acceptable.

Apparently not. Everyone should get one “oopsie”. Not only is this sort of attitude entirely cavalier towards the emotional issues involved with having an abortion (including all of the studies that have shown the extreme emotional distress often suffered by women who have abortions) but also demonstrates that she is arguing for abortion on demand regardless of the reasons why a woman wants to have one. Why then bring up the issue of rape and incest?

It is an absolute within the bounds of standard medical practice, as set by the College of Physicians and Surgeons in each province.

I’m not exactly sure what this ambiguous statement means. Medically, there is little debate that life begins at conception, as Dr Landrum Shettles, the first scientist who successfully achieved conception in a test tube, notes that conception not only confers but “defines” life. The unborn is, in fact, genetically distinct from its parents and is a separate human entity. (It has human parents after all so it is thus human.) I’m not sure it’s within the bounds of standard medical practice to kill human beings that we don’t particularly like.

He ensured our right and, indeed, our privilege, to make up our own minds about pregnancy — to be unfettered by the opinions of others or the pressures of society.

This merely assumes what the author is trying to argue for, as we saw earlier. Perhaps the argument would go something like this:

1) Women should have the right to make up their own minds about their bodies.
2) The unborn is a part of a woman’s body.
3) Therefore, women should have the right to do what they wish with the unborn.

Well, 1) is not in dispute, as I have no interest in telling women what they can or can’t do with their bodies. It is 2) that I take issue with. It is the unproved and undefended assertion by this author which flies in the face of logic and medical evidence.

Obviously, his detractors are legion. They include men who rail at the notion women alone should be permitted to decided [sic] whether to bear a child or not.

Silly weasel-wording and straw-man construction (no pun intended). As above, few, if any, men would take such a view. The issue is not a woman’s choice whether or not to become pregnant, the issue is what is ethical once they are pregnant.

They include a host of religions and their acolytes who demand unswerving obedience to a set of man-made rules.

I hope that the careful reader will notice that I have not made any appeal to religious doctrine during my discussion of abortion. (More on this in a moment.)

They also include women who, for whatever reason, believe their lives should be ruled by chance, happenstance and blind obedience.

Another straw-[wo]man argument. Pro-life advocates who are female are branded illogical nincompoops.

So be it. That is exactly what choice entails. Every Canadian woman can now say proudly, “My life, my body, my decisions.”

And again, the author loudly and proudly entirely misses the point. The entire editorial contained no justification for the view being presented, merely statement and restatement of the view and its fundamental underpinnings without any rational argument.

I will say that it can be easy to miss the point with a controversial issue like this one, especially when reason can quickly become clouded or overwrought with emotional issues. But all of the abortion questions can be reduced to just one: What is the unborn? As Greg Koukl says: “If the unborn are not human, no justification for elective abortion is necessary. But if the unborn are human, no justification for elective abortion is adequate.”

The best (short) online resource on this question is Dr William Lane Craig’s writing here, which is not, as Ms Ford might expect, based on religious reasoning:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6351

Please read and carefully consider the argument Dr Craig above. This is not merely an academic question, one where learned individuals sit around stroking their beards, smoking their pipes and waxing philosophically on their easy-chairs. As I’ve posted previously there are over one million abortions performed every month. If abortion really does, as pro-life advocates claim, kill human beings, that is one million morally reprehensible deaths each month.

Lately though I’ve been trying to get back into reading more often, and the current book I’m working through is Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. It was recommended by a couple different blogs that I frequent (independently of eachother) so I figured I’d pick it up. It’s quite well written so far (I’m only about 20% done at this point) and I like the fact that it is sort of a reply to Dawkins/Harris/Dennet/Hitchens without actually being presented that way (as merely a rebuttal or defense). He brings a scholar’s mind and a pastor’s heart to his writing which helps to make it intellectually rigorous while at the same time compassionate and humble.

I recently also saw an interesting post about Tim Keller speaking at Google headquarters about his book. Apparently it was the largest turn out ever for a Google “Author Talk” event. Hopefully the talk will be posted on YouTube or something soon. Quote: “Weak faith in a strong object is infinitely better than strong faith in a weak object.” Check out the book if you haven’t already, it’s good stuff.

One of the threads on the FORU.MS discussion board was deleted recently, and one of my old posts went along with it. (Not sure why the thread was removed.) A mod was kind enough to forward my post in the thread to me before it was removed, so here’s my reply below to someone who posted some comments on science and faith, which I have edited & expanded a bit for this blog: (original poster’s comments in italics; assume all spelling errors in his/her writing were in their original post)

Christians don’t trust in Science because it clean’s their clock. I mean Noah’s ark? Camon.

There are several different theories regarding Noah’s Ark. Many believe it was a local flood; ie, it covered the entire world that was known to people at that time. Others claim that it was indeed a worldwide flood, which is buttressed to some extent by the other flood stories that appear in other ancient documents. Still others take it metaphorically. Personally I think that may be stretching the account to interpret it that way. But, we can’t really know for sure which is more likely the correct approach.

The bible is full of contradictions, I could name thousands. Do a google search.

Let’s keep in mind what a contradiction is: “a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two conclusions which form the logical inversions of each other.” What are usually cited as contradictions are actually purported errors, but nevertheless, if Google searches are your fancy, do a Google search on answers to the supposed contradictions and you’ll find solid answers for most of them (for example, one of J P Holding’s lists, or this refutation of a Muslim “101″ list). There have been times when certain alleged errors or contradictions have been cleared up by further research or archaeological finds, so for the few questions that are as yet unknown, it doesn’t really bother me that we may not understand every word of the Bible completely. There are of course good reasons to believe the New Testament is trustworthy and reliable.

Science and Christianity to not play nice together. Christians sometimes get angry and kill the bringers of science: “Galeao and his godless telescope for example”

This is unfortunately true. It’s sad when Christians abandon the teachings of Jesus and immorally commit acts that deny His teachings. But this is not proof that Christianity is false. Thousands of Christians are martyred every year by secular governments; that does not prove that atheism is wrong any more than the bad things done by some Christians prove that Christianity is wrong. For more on this topic, see Skeptical Christian’s “Evil Christianity” or my own (brief) post Christians do bad things. That said, as per Philip J. Sampson the story of Galileo has become a ‘modern myth’ and the real story is not quite so condemning once we acknowledge all the relevant details.

Science provides solid proof that Christians are ridiculous therefore Christians cannot allow science to invade their sacred space of Faith.

I’m sorry that you feel that way, but please keep in mind that many of the great scientists throughout history have been “religious”, and a large number today believe that God exists. A recent study of college professors demonstrated that the majority believe God exists (source). For example, Dr Alister McGrath, who holds two PhDs from Oxford, one in molecular biophysics and the other in theology, is a proponent of what he refers to as scientific theology.

Is there a fundamental conflict between science and religion? I don’t think so. Is there a fundamental conflict between science of the naturalism or scientism sort and religion? Naturally!

The idea that science disproves the possibility of miracles is, IMHO, extremely misguided. Science is able to confirm that certain things are testable and repeatable, that is, empirically verifiable in the present. Miracles, by nature, are none of these things. For example, today as I rode home on the bus I glanced out the window as the bus came to a stop. To my surprise I saw a rabbit sitting on the grass beside the road. I had never seen a rabbit here before (a fairly built-up area along a heavily trafficked road). This event is still not testable (you’ll have to take my word for it that I observed a rabbit earlier today) and not repeatable (even if we were to get on the same bus, drive along the same road, etc, the circumstances could never be exactly the same) and yet the event really did occur. There is no reason to claim that this was a miraculous event, but even here science cannot test whether this mundane event occurred.

Therefore it’s no surprise that science has not (cannot) confirm (or disprove) the miraculous. Richard R. Purtill notes in his essay “Defining Miracles” (also part of the aforementioned book) that scientists “tend to confine their investigations to the ordinary course of nature and to ignore such exceptions as might be made to the course of nature by God, since exceptions brought about by personal agency cannot be predicted from a study of what normally happens”.

Trying to test whether a supposed miraculous event occurred in history using the scientific method is sort of like trying to determine whether a banana is tasty by sticking it in your ear and listening to it. It’s inappropriate methodology. There’s nothing wrong with the scientific method for testing natural phenomenon. However a miracle is not natural, and therefore it is misguided to dismiss, say, the resurrection by appealing to science that shows that people rising from the dead is impossible. Of course we observe that dead people stay dead, and that’s entirely the point. This wasn’t lost on first century people either: Jesus’ resurrection was a big deal because people knew that dead people are supposed to stay dead.

This does not mean that science has no part in examining the truth claims of miracles, but only that as unique events in history, a miracle claim is more properly investigated as history rather than science.

Further reading: The Facts Concerning the Resurrection: Don’t believe the New Testament is a reliable historical source? I’d argue that the NT is historically reliable, but try let’s throwing out most of what it contains, and only focus on facts agreed upon by the vast majority of scholars, Christian or not. What we find might surprise you!

That particular question could be addressed by appealing to God’s transcendent knowledge and so forth. However, my answer to Dawkins’ inquiry would’ve differed from McGrath’s response. I might have said something like this … well, if I was quick enough to respond somewhat articulately in the heat of the moment, that is:

No, I don’t think we can say that God saved that one child. Neither can we say that God did NOT save that one child. While God has the power to supersede the natural order, unless there is evidence that He has done so in a particular situation we should not automatically conclude that He has done so. In this hypothetical scenario, there just isn’t enough information given to make that decision. The issue we’re really talking about here is whether a certain event was caused by miraculous intervention by God or not. I would not claim that God miraculously intervened unless the context of the event supported this conclusion.

A similar example of this came up earlier in their discussion, regarding the issue of Jesus’ resurrection. If claims existed that Karl Marx had been raised from the dead, these claims would differ from the resurrection accounts because (among other reasons!) there was in the first century socio-religious context present to make sense of the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection. It was not simply a curious event that had no greater meaning; it was in fact triumphantly meaningful.

Of course, McGrath’s reply that it is right and proper to be thankful for the blessings we receive is correct; however I would just be more hesitant to say that God had worked a miracle in a particular situation.

Enough about me.

I was reading a magazine today where a man was asked “Is your religion truer than another?” Unsurprisingly, he replied “We’ll never know that.” Is this a reasonable statement? What does this really mean?

I’d like to first preface my comments by pointing out that if God exists, and religions have opposite views about God’s nature, then necessarily one is “truer” than the others. If God exists He really possesses certain attributes, and therefore one of the descriptions given by one of those religions would match most closely to those attributes.

However, the real question lurking here is whether or not we can really know anything about God. “We’ll never know that,” the man says, indicating that he agrees God exists and possesses attributes, but doubts we can know those attributes, let alone know God personally. I’ve found that the majority of people I speak to about spiritual issues believe God exists. However, many of those same people claim we can’t really know anything about God. Now, part of the source of this opinion is due to tolerance overindulgence, and people are just afraid of being branded “intolerant” for voicing their convictions regarding spiritual issues. That doesn’t prove that the belief is wrong (genetic fallacy) but does suggest that people may not have considered the philosophical reasons for their claim.

The claim:

I’ve posted before about why it is deficient to apply the same methodology we use to study mundane things to studying God. That, I think, is an important and valid argument against the idea that we cannot “know” God, because most people making that claim are assuming (knowingly or not) entirely natural methodology.

But here’s another thing to think about. If someone says we cannot know anything about God, ask why. As soon as a person tries to provide reasons by saying “Because God is …” their argument falls apart; it is self-refuting. Greg Koukl would say the argument “commits suicide”. In order to defend the conclusion (that we can’t know anything about God) the proponent must base their conclusion on what they claim to know about God!

Consider this analogy:

Fred: We can’t know anything about Bob.
Jill: Why?
Fred: Because Bob lives alone in a house in the mountains with the windows painted black and never comes outside.

The problem with the argument should be obvious: Fred provides several facts he claims to know about Bob in order to try to prove we can’t know anything about him!

Moreover, even the claim on its own without appeal to other information is self-refuting! The claim we can’t know anything about God is itself making a claim to know something about God: That God is unknowable! It commits a fallacy similar to the liar paradox. So even if no further premises are expounded to support this conclusion (such as that God is infinite and therefore incomprehensible by our finite minds, a poor argument IMHO) the conclusion still fails because it self-destructs.

A much more reasonable position would be we can’t know very much about God, but I think that even without appeal to special revelation (like a holy book for example), we can still know much about God via observation and reflection alone. (See “What about natural theology?“) These are not ends unto themselves, but steps along the way. Faith is (at least in part) a journey and not just a destination; however, people who are searching should not be so intent upon gazing at the sky while they walk that they fail to see the yawning chasm lying just ahead.