At one point in Dr. Richard Dawkins' interview with Dr. Alister McGrath, Dawkins proposes a scenario: A disaster of some sort occurs where 1000's are killed, but one child survives. Dawkins asks McGrath if God saved that one child, and McGrath affirms that yes, God did save that one child. Dawkins is perplexed by this, because the natural question that arises from McGrath's answer (that God saved the one child) is: Why God did not save the other children?

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.

Sorry about the lack of posts lately. In the last two months, I've finished my last full semester for my masters at Tyndale and just got back from some tiring ministry training in British Columbia. Fun times, but very busy. The final course I'll be taking this summer (the last elective to complete my degree) will be Defending the Faith: Resurrection, taught by a leading scholar on the resurrection, Dr. Gary Habermas. Needless to say, I'm quite excited about taking the course!

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.

I forgot to post it before, but Alvin Plantinga, one of the foremost philosophers alive today, wrote a review of Dawkins' The God Delusion for Christianity Today magazine recently. Read it here:

» The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

The title of the article is groan-worthy, but the article itself is not. Plantinga begins his review by making an important note:

[Dawkins] and [Daniel] Dennett both appear to think it requires considerable courage to attack religion these days … Here it's not easy to take them seriously; religion-bashing in the current Western academy is about as dangerous as endorsing the party's candidate at a Republican rally.

This is one of the initial objections I had to Sam Harris' book, Letter to a Christian Nation: This is not a "Christian nation", it's a secular nation, especially in academia. Dawkins' dismissal of biochemist Michael Behe's work out of hand because "Behe believes in God" is an example of the prevailing academic attitude.^* Also, note that in Dawkins' own nation, One third of all Christians say: We've suffered discrimination (Dailymail.co.uk news story).

Also worthy of note, one of my professors at Tyndale University College & Seminary is working on the first North American book in reply to The God Delusion. Alister McGrath's book is already out in the UK (McGrath also teaches at Oxford University; I wonder Dawkins and McGrath have ever bumped into each other on campus?) but I haven't read it yet either, so I don't know how good it is.

For the record, I still haven't read Dawkins' book. I should have time to read non-school related books after I finish my degree this summer.

^* This incident is related in more detail, in context, in James W. Sire's excellent book Why Good Arguments Often Fail, p63-64.

Lately I've been reading Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant?: A Professor And a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism & Christianity, a book that chronicles an email discussion between Dr Preston Jones (Christian, history professor, PhD University of Ottawa) and Dr Greg Graffin (naturalist, singer from the punk band Bad Religion, PhD Cornell University). Overall, it's an interesting read. I'm glad their discussion never turned into a "debate" because, generally speaking, a debate is about "winning" at all costs, not honest discussion or learning about how others view things.

I'm slightly disappointed so far with some of Dr Jones' responses, though. One of the main things that annoys me so far is the logic given to assume a naturalistic worldview. [EDIT: As Preston himself (!) points out in the comments, he does not support Gaffin's view, and in fact does support a view similar to the one I expound later on in this post. Probably the format of the dialogue made it difficult to get his view out in the open fully in the book.]

Now, I'm probably oversimplifying this, and Dr Graffin could probably kick my ass (in both the physical and intellectual arenas) but nonetheless here's how I understand the argument:

1. Empirical observation of the universe is the 'sum of all truth'. (cf p.43 of Jones and Gaffin's book)
2. Therefore, the only way to know the truth about God is to use the same methods used to study naturalistic phenomena.
3. Since there is no proof of God observable in this way, God does not exist.

Now, while I disagree with point #1 (this seems to be a self-refuting argument; how can you prove this statement is true by empirical observation?) and also with point #3 (see for example What about natural theology? which suggests that we can know some things about God via observation), I'd like to comment briefly on point #2.

The idea that the same methods used to study naturalistic phenomena (that is, the physical things in our own universe) can be used to study God (who is outside of, not limited to, our physical universe) is to me a faulty assumption. I'll try not to repeat what I've already posted on this blog, so see my post Knowing God for a fuller explanation, but the gist of it is this: "I am suggesting that rigidly applying the same methodology used for studying mundane things would be in some sense deficient when considering divine things." If God is in an entirely different category than physical things, we cannot "study" Him in the same way we study physical things, so therefore concluding that God does not exist because He cannot be empirically studied is a faulty assumption. This doesn't prove that God exists, it only suggests that the naturalistic reasoning like that given above is not sufficient to conclude that God does not exist.

Further reading:

• Lessons from a Punker Ph.D. – Preston Jones reflects on his conversation with Greg Graffin.
• Finding Faith – Brian McLaren's book (in particular pages 102-104) were the inspiration for my line of thinking on this subject.
• Is Faith Just a Psychological Crutch? – I hear this all the time: "You may need God, but I don't." Implicit in the statement is "You believe in God because you're weak". Besides being fallacious reasoning, I don't think this charge is true.