Featured Article: Why Should Anyone Believe Anything at all?

**Trout** · May 27th 2004, 07:23 PM

Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All?

Chapter 2 from the new book

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist

by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek

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People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

BLAISE PASCAL

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AUTHOR AND SPEAKER James Sire conducts an eye-opening interactive seminar for students at colleges and universities across the country. The seminar is called Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All?

With such an intriguing title, the event usually attracts a large audience. Sire begins by asking those in attendance this question: "Why do people believe what they believe?" Despite the wide variety of answers, Sire shows that each answer he gets fits into one of these four categories: sociological, psychological, religious, and philosophical.(1)

Sire goes through the reasons in each category by asking students, "Is that a good reason to believe something?" If he gets sharp students (like he would at Southern Evangelical Seminary!), the dialog might go something like this:

Sire:I see that many of you cited sociological factors. For example, many people have beliefs because their parents have those same beliefs. Do you think that alone is a good enough reason to believe something?

Students: No, parents can sometimes be wrong!

Sire: Okay, what about cultural influences? Do you think people ought to believe something just because it's accepted culturally?

Students: No, not necessarily. The Nazis had a culture that accepted the murder of all Jews. That sure didn't make it right!

Sire: Good. Now, some of you mentioned psychological factors such as comfort. Is that a good enough reason to believe something?

Students: No, we're not comfortable with that! Seriously, comfort is not a test for truth. We might be comforted by the belief that there's a God out there who cares for us, but that doesn't necessarily mean he really exists. Likewise, a junkie might be temporarily comforted by a certain type of drug, but that drug might actually kill him.

Sire: So you're saying that truth is important because there can be consequences when you're wrong?

Students: Yes, if someone is wrong about a drug, they might take too much and die. Likewise, if someone is wrong about the thickness of the ice, they might fall in and freeze to death.

Sire: So for pragmatic reasons it makes sense that we should only believe things that are true.

Students:Of course. Over the long run, truth protects and error harms.

Sire: Okay, so sociological and psychological reasons alone are not adequate grounds to believe something. What about religious reasons? Some mentioned the Bible; others mentioned the Qur'an; still others got their beliefs from priests or gurus. Should you believe something just because some religious source or holy book says so?

Students: No, because the question arises, "Whose scripture or whose source should we believe?" After all, they teach contradictory things.

Sire:Can you give me an example?

Students: Well, the Bible and the Qur'an, for example, can't both be true because they contradict one another. The Bible says that Jesus died on the cross and rose three days later (1 Cor. 15:1-8), while the Qur'an says he existed but didn't die on the cross (Sura 4:157). If one's right, the other one is wrong. Then again, if Jesus never existed, both of them are wrong.

Sire: So how could we adjudicate between, say, the Bible and the Qur'an?

Students: We need some proofs outside those so-called scriptures to help us discover which, if either, is true.

Sire: From which category could we derive such proofs?

Students: All we have left is the philosophical category.

Sire: But how can someone's philosophy be a proof? Isn't that just someone's opinion?

Students: No, we don't mean philosophy in that sense of the word, but in the classic sense of the word where philosophy means finding truth through logic, evidence, and science.

Sire: Excellent! So with that definition in mind, let's ask the same question of the philosophical category. Is something worth believing if it's rational, if it's supported by evidence, and if it best explains all the data?

Students:That certainly seems right to us!

By exposing inadequate justifications for beliefs, the way is cleared for the seeker of truth to find adequate justifications. This is what an apologist does. An apologist is someone who shows how good reason and evidence support or contradict a particular belief. That's what we're attempting to do in this book, and it's what Sire sets up in his seminar.

Sire's Socratic approach helps students realize at least three things. First, any teaching, religious or otherwise, is worth trusting only if it points to the truth. Apathy about truth can be dangerous. In fact, believing error can have deadly consequences, both temporally andCif any one of a number of religious teachings are trueCeternally as well.

Second, many beliefs that people hold today are not supported by evidence, but only by the subjective preferences of those holding them. As Pascal said, people almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive. But truth is not a subjective matter of taste, it's an objective matter of fact.

Finally, in order to find truth, one must be ready to give up those subjective preferences in favor of objective facts. And facts are best discovered through logic, evidence, and science.

While using logic, evidence, and science seems the best way to get at truth, there are some who still have an objection. That objection concerns logic, namely, whose logic should we use, Eastern or Western? Ravi Zacharias tells a humorous anecdote that will reveal the answer.

WESTERN LOGIC VS. EASTERN LOGIC?

As a Christian apologist, author, and native of India, Ravi Zacharias travels the world giving evidence for the Christian faith. He has an incisive intellect and an engaging personality, which makes him a favorite on college and university campuses.

Following a recent presentation on an American campus regarding the uniqueness of Christ, Ravi was assailed by one of the university's professors for not understanding Eastern logic. During the Q&A period the professor charged, "Dr. Zacharias, your presentation about Christ claiming and proving to be the only way to salvation is wrong for people in India because you're using either-or logic. In the East we don't use either-or logic, that's Western. In the East we use both-and logic. So salvation is not either through Christ or nothing else, but both Christ and other ways."

Ravi found this very ironic because, after all, he grew up in India. Yet here was a Western-born, American professor telling Ravi that he didn't understand how things really worked in India! This was so intriguing that Ravi accepted the professor's invitation to lunch in order to discuss it further.

One of the professor's colleagues joined them for lunch, and as he and Ravi ate, the professor used every napkin and place mat on the table to make his point about the two types of logic"one Western and one Eastern."

"There are two types of logic," the professor kept insisting.

"No, you don't mean that," Ravi kept replying.

"I absolutely do!" maintained the professor.

This went on for better than thirty minutes: the professor lecturing, writing, and diagramming. He became so engrossed in making his points that he forgot to eat his meal, which was slowly congealing on his plate.

Upon finishing his own meal, Ravi decided to unleash the Road Runner tactic to rebut the confused but insistent professor. He interrupted, "Professor, I think we can resolve this debate very quickly with just one question."

Looking up from his furious drawing, the professor paused and said, "Okay, go ahead."

Ravi leaned forward, looked directly at the professor, and asked, "Are you saying that when I'm in India, I must use either the both-and logic or nothing else?"

The professor looked blankly at Ravi, who then repeated his question with emphasis: "Are you saying that when I'm in India, I must use either," Ravi paused for effect, "the both-and logic or," another pause,"nothing else?"

Ravi later commented to us that the next words out of the professor's mouth were worth the time listening to his incoherent ramblings.

After glancing sheepishly at his colleague, the professor looked down at his congealed meal and mumbled, "The either-or does seem to emerge, doesn't it." Ravi added, "Yes, even in India we look both ways before we cross the street because it is either me or the bus, not both of us!"

Indeed, the either-or does seem to emerge. The professor was using the either-or logic to try and prove the both-and logic, which is the same problem everyone experiences who tries to argue against the first principles of logic.

They wind up sawing off the very limb upon which they sit.

Imagine if the professor had said, "Ravi, your math calculations are wrong in India because you're using Western math rather than Eastern math." Or suppose he had declared, "Ravi, your physics calculations don't apply to India because you're using Western gravity rather than Eastern gravity." We would immediately see the folly of the professor's reasoning.

In fact, despite what the relativists believe, things work in the East just like they work everywhere else. In India, just like in the United States, buses hurt when they hit you, 2+2=4, and the same gravity keeps everyone on the ground. Likewise, murder is wrong there just as it is here. Truth is truth no matter what country you come from. And truth is truth no matter what you believe about it. Just as the same gravity keeps all people on the ground whether they believe in it or not, the same logic applies to all people whether they believe it or not.

So what's the point? The point is that there's only one type of logic that helps us discover truth. It's the one built into the nature of reality that we can't avoid using. Despite this, people will try to tell you that logic doesn't apply to reality, or logic doesn't apply to God, or there are different types of logic,(2) and so on. But as they say such things, they use the very logic they are denying. This is like using the laws of arithmetic to prove that arithmetic cannot be trusted.

It's important to note that we are not simply engaging in word games here. The Road Runner tactic uses the undeniable laws of logic to expose that much of what our common culture believes about truth, religion, and morality is undeniably false. That which is self-defeating cannot be true, but many Americans believe it anyway. We contradict ourselves at our own peril.

TO BE BURNED OR NOT TO BE BURNED, THAT IS THE QUESTION

The Road Runner tactic is so effective because it utilizes the Law of Noncontradiction. The Law of Noncontradiction is a self-evident first principle of thought that says contradictory claims cannot both be true at the same time in the same sense. In short, it says that the opposite of true is false. We all know this law intuitively, and use it every day.

Suppose you see a married couple on the street one day, friends of yours, and you ask the wife if it's true that she's expecting a baby. If she says "yes" and her husband says "no," you don't say, "Thanks a lot, that really helps me!" You think, "Maybe she hasn't told him, or maybe they misunderstood the question (or maybe something worse!)." There's one thing you know for sure: they can't both be right! The Law of Noncontradiction makes that self-evident to you.

When investigating any question of fact, including the question of God, the same Law of Noncontradiction applies. Either the theists are right, God exists, or the atheists are right, God doesn't exist. Both can't be correct. Likewise, either Jesus died and rose from the dead as the Bible claims, or he did not as the Qur'an claims. One is right, and the other is wrong.

In fact, a medieval Muslim philosopher by the name of Avicenna suggested a surefire way to correct someone who denies the Law of Non-contradiction. He said that anyone who denies the Law of Noncontradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned! (A bit extreme, but you get the point!)

While reasonable people have no problem with the Law of Noncontradiction, some very influential philosophers have denied it implicitly in their teachings. Perhaps the two most influential of these are David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Many people have never heard of Hume and Kant, but their teachings have affected the modern mind greatly. That's why it's important that we take a brief look at each one of them. We'll start with Hume.

HUME'S SKEPTICISM: SHOULD WE BE SKEPTICAL ABOUT IT?

Perhaps more than any other person, David Hume is responsible for the skepticism prevalent today. As an empiricist, Hume believed that all meaningful ideas were either true by definition or must be based on sense experience. Since, according to Hume, there are no sense experiences for concepts beyond the physical, any metaphysical claims (those about concepts beyond the physical, including God) should not be believed, because they are meaningless. In fact, Hume asserted that propositions can be meaningful only if they meet one of the following two conditions:

1. The truth claim is abstract reasoning such as a mathematical equation or a definition (e.g., "2+2=4" or "all triangles have three sides"); or

2. The truth claim can be verified empirically through one or more of the five senses.

While he claimed to be a skeptic, Hume certainly wasn't skeptical about these two conditions, he was absolutely convinced he had the truth. In fact, he concludes his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding with this emphatic assertion: "If we take in our hand any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."(3)

Do you see the implications of Hume's two conditions? If he's correct, then any book talking about God is meaningless. You might as well use all religious writings for kindling!

Nearly two hundred years later, Hume's two conditions were converted into the "principle of empirical verifiability" by twentieth-century philosopher A. J. Ayer. The principle of empirical verifiability claims that a proposition can be meaningful only if it's true by definition or if it's empirically verifiable.

By the mid-1960s this view had become the rage in university philosophy departments across the country, including the University of Detroit where I (Norm) was a student. In fact, I took an entire class on Logical Positivism, which was another name for the brand of philosophy espoused by Ayer. The professor of that class, a Logical Positivist, was a strange breed. Though he claimed to be a Catholic, he refused to believe it was meaningful to speak about the existence of reality beyond the physical (i.e., metaphysics, God). In other words, he was an admitted atheist who told us that he wanted to convert the entire class to his brand of semantical atheism. (I once asked him, "How can you be both a Catholic and an atheist?" Ignoring two millennia of official Catholic teaching, he replied, "You don't have to believe in God to be a Catholic, you just have to keep the rules!")

On the first day of that class, this professor gave the class the task of giving presentations based on chapters in Ayer's book Logic, Truth, and Language. I volunteered to do the chapter titled "The Principle of Empirical Verifiability." Now keep in mind, this principle was the very foundation of Logical Positivism and thus of the entire course.

At the beginning of the next class, the professor said, "Mr. Geisler, we'll hear from you first. Keep it to no more than twenty minutes so we can have ample time for discussion."

Well, since I was using the lightning-fast Road Runner tactic, I had absolutely no trouble with the time constraints. I stood up and simply said, "The principle of empirical verifiability states that there are only two kinds of meaningful propositions:

1) those that are true by definition and

2) those that are empirically verifiable. Since the principle of empirical verifiability itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, it cannot be meaningful."

That was it, and I sat down.

There was a stunned silence in the room. Most of the students could see the Coyote dangling in midair. They recognized that the principle of empirical verifiability could not be meaningful based on its own standard. It self-destructed in midair! In just the second class period, the foundation of that entire class had been destroyed! What was the professor going to talk about for the next fourteen weeks?

I'll tell you what he was going to talk about. Instead of admitting that his class and his entire philosophical outlook was self-defeating and thus false, the professor suppressed that truth, hemmed and hawed, and then went on to suspect that I was behind everything that went wrong for him the rest of the semester. His allegiance to the principle of empirical verifiability, despite its obvious fatal flaw, was clearly a matter of the will, not of the mind.

There's a lot more to Hume, particularly his anti-miracle arguments, which we'll address when we get to chapter 8. But for now the point is this: Hume's hard empiricism, and that of his devotee A. J. Ayer, is self-defeating. The claim that "something can only be meaningful if it's empirically verifiable or true by definition" excludes itself because that statement is neither empirically verifiable nor true by definition. In other words, Hume and Ayer try to prove too much because their method of discovering meaningful propositions excludes too much. Certainly claims that are empirically verifiable or true by definition are meaningful. However, such claims don't comprise all meaningful statements as Hume and Ayer contend. So instead of committing all books about God "to the flames" as Hume suggests, you may want to consider using Hume's books to get your fire going.

KANT'S AGNOSTICISM: SHOULD WE BE AGNOSTIC ABOUT IT?

Immanuel Kant's impact has been even more devastating to the Christian worldview than David Hume's. For if Kant's philosophy is right, then there is no way to know anything about the real world, even empirically verifiable things! Why? Because according to Kant the structure of your senses and your mind forms all sense data, so you never really know the thing in itself. You only know the thing to you after your mind and senses form it.

To get a handle on this, look for a second out the window at a tree. Kant is saying that the tree you think you are looking at appears the way it does because your mind is forming the sense data you're getting from the tree. You really don't know the tree in itself; you only know the phenomena your mind categorizes about the tree. In short, you "kant" know the real tree in itself, only the tree as it appears to you.

Whew! Why is it that the average person on the street doesn't doubt what he sees with his own two eyes, but supposedly brilliant philosophers do? The more we study philosophy, the more we are convinced of this: if you want to make the obvious seem obscure, just let a philosopher get ahold of it!
Nevertheless, we can't avoid studying philosophy because, as C. S. Lewis said, "good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."(4) Kant's philosophy is bad philosophy, yet it has convinced many people that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the real world; that there's no way you can get any reliable knowledge about what the world is really like, much less what God is really like. According to Kant, we are locked in complete agnosticism about the real world.

Thankfully, there's a simple answer to all of this, the Road Runner tactic. Kant commits the same error as Hume, he violates the Law of Noncontradiction. He contradicts his own premise by saying that no one can know the real world while he claims to know something about it, namely that the real world is unknowable! In effect, Kant says the truth about the real world is that there are no truths about the real world.

Since these self-defeating statements can stump even the sharpest minds, let's look at Kant's error another way. Kant is also making a logical fallacy called the "nothing-but" fallacy. This is a fallacy because "nothing-but" statements imply "more than" knowledge. Kant says he knows the data that gets to his brain is nothing but phenomena. But in order to know this, he would have to be able to see more than just the phenomena. In other words, in order to differentiate one thing from another thing, you have to be able to perceive where one ends and the other begins. For example, if you put a white piece of paper on a black desk, the only way you can tell where the paper ends is by seeing some of the desk that borders it. The contrast between the paper and the desk allows you to see the boundaries of the paper. Likewise, in order for Kant to differentiate the thing in the real world from that which his mind perceives, he would have to be able to see both. But this is exactly what he says can't be done! He says only the phenomena of the mind can be known, not the noumena (his term for the real world).

If there's no way to distinguish between the phenomena and noumena, then you can't see how they might differ. And if you can't see how they might differ, then it makes much more sense to assume that they are the same, in other words, that the idea in your mind accurately represents the thing in the real world.

What we are saying is that you really do know the thing in itself. You really do know the tree you are seeing because it is being impressed on your mind through your senses. In other words, Kant was wrong: your mind doesn't mold the tree, the tree molds your mind. (Just think about a wax seal: it's not the wax that impresses the seal; it's the seal that impresses the wax.) There's no gulf between your mind and the real world. In fact, your senses are your windows to the world. And senses, like windows, are that through which we look at the outside world. They are not that at which we are looking.

In a philosophy class I (Norm) was teaching, I pointed out the flaws in Kant's philosophy this way. I said, "First, if Kant claims that he can't know anything about the real world (the thing in itself) then how does he know the real world is there? And second, his view is self-defeating because he claims that you can't know anything about the real world while asserting that he knows that the real world is unknowable!"(5)

One student blurted out, "No! It can't be that easy, Dr. Geisler. You can't destroy the central tenet of the last hundred-plus years of philosophical thought in just a couple of simple sentences!"

Quoting my favorite source, The Reader's Digest, I responded, "That's what happens when a beautiful theory meets a brutal gang of facts. Besides, whoever said that a refutation has to be complex? If someone makes a simple mistake, it only takes a simple correction to point it out."There's nothing complex about the Road Runner; he's simply fast and effective.

HUME AND KANT ARE WRONG. SO WHAT?

Since Hume and Kant violate the Law of Noncontradiction, their attempts to destroy all "religious" truths fail. However, just because Hume and Kant are wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have positive evidence for, say, the existence of God. The Road Runner tactic can only reveal that a proposition is false. It does not provide positive evidence that any particular claim is true.

So is it true that a theistic God exists? Is there any knowable evidence that will give us reasonable certainty one way or the other? Is there such a thing as knowable evidence for an unseen God? To answer those questions, we need to investigate how truth itself can be known.

HOW IS TRUTH KNOWN?

Let's sum up what we've seen so far: truth exists, and it is absolute and undeniable. To say "truth cannot be known" is self-defeating because that very statement claims to be a known, absolute truth. In fact, anytime we say anything, we are implying that we know at least some truth because any position on any subject implies some degree of knowledge. If you say that someone's position is wrong, you must know what is right in order to say that (you can't know what is wrong unless you know what is right). Even if you say, "I don't know," you are admitting that you know something; namely, you know you don't know something else about the topic in question, not that you don't know anything at all.

But just how does one know truth? In other words, by what process do we discover truths about the world? The process of discovering truth begins with the self-evident laws of logic called first principles. They are called first principles because there is nothing behind them. They are not proved by other principles; they are simply inherent in the nature of reality and are thus self-evident. So you don't learn these first principles; you just know them. Everyone intuitively knows these principles even if they haven't thought about them explicitly.

Two of these principles are the Law of Noncontradiction and the Law of the Excluded Middle. We've already seen the reality and value of the Law of Noncontradiction. The Law of the Excluded Middle tells us that something either is or is not. For example, either God exists or he does not. Either Jesus rose from the dead or he did not. There are no third alternatives.

These first principles are the tools we use to discover all other truths. In fact, without them you couldn't learn anything else. First principles are to learning what your eyes are to seeing. Just as your eyes must be built into your body for you to see anything, first principles must be built into your mind for you to learn anything. It is from these first principles that we can learn about reality and ultimately discover the box top to this puzzle we call life.

Although we use these first principles to help us discover truth, they alone cannot tell us whether or not a particular proposition is true. To see what we mean, consider the following logical argument:

1. All men are mortal.

2. Spencer is a man.

3. Therefore Spencer is mortal.

The self-evident laws of logic tell us that the conclusion, Spencer is mortal, is a valid conclusion. In other words, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. If all men are mortal and if Spencer is a man, then Spencer is mortal. However, the laws of logic do not tell us whether those premises, and thus the conclusion, is true. Maybe all men are not mortal; maybe Spencer is not a man. Logic by itself can't tell us one way or the other.
This point is more easily seen by looking at a valid argument that isn't true. Consider the following:

1. All men are four-legged reptiles.

2. Zachary is a man.

3. Therefore Zachary is a four-legged reptile.

Logically, this argument is valid, but we all know it isn't true. The argument is valid because the conclusion follows from the premises. But the conclusion is false because the first premise is false. In other words, an argument can be logically sound but still be false because the premises of the argument do not correspond to reality. So logic only gets us so far. Logic can tell us that an argument is false, but it cannot tell us by itself which premises are true. How do we know that Zachary is a man? How do we know that men are not four-legged reptiles? We need some more information to discover those truths.

We get that information from observing the world around us and then drawing general conclusions from those observations. When you observe something over and over again, you may conclude that some general principle is true. For example, when you repeatedly drop an object off a table, you naturally observe that the object always falls to the floor. If you do that enough, you finally realize that there must be some general principle in place known as gravity.

This method of drawing general conclusions from specific observations is called induction (which is commonly equated with the scientific method). In order to be clear, we need to distinguish induction from deduction. The process of lining up premises in an argument and arriving at a valid conclusion is called deduction. That's what we did in the arguments above. But the process of discovering whether the premises in an argument are true usually requires induction.

Much of what you know, you know by induction. In fact, you've already used induction intuitively to investigate the truth of the premises in the arguments above. Namely, you determined that since every man you've observed has been a two-legged mammal, the man Zachary cannot be a four-legged reptile. You did the same thing with the question of Spencer's mortality. Since all men you've heard about ultimately die, you made the general conclusion that all men are mortal including a specific individual man named Spencer. These conclusions, two-legged men, gravity, and human mortality, are all inductive conclusions.

Most conclusions based on induction cannot be considered absolutely certain but only highly probable. For example, are you absolutely, 100 percent certain that gravity makes all objects drop? No, because you haven't observed all objects being dropped. Likewise, are you absolutely certain that all men are mortal? No, because you haven't observed all men die. Perhaps there's someone somewhere who hasn't died or will not die in the future.

So if inductive conclusions are not certain, can they be trusted? Yes, but to varying degrees of certainty. As we have said before, since no human being possesses infinite knowledge, most of our inductive conclusions can be wrong. (There is one important exception. It's called the "perfect induction," where all the particulars are known. For example, Aall the letters on this page are black." This perfect induction yields certainty about the conclusion because you can observe and verify that every letter is indeed black.)

But even when we don't have complete or perfect information, we often have enough information to make reasonably certain conclusions on most questions in life. For example, since virtually everyone has been observed to die, your conclusion that all men are mortal is considered true beyond a reasonable doubt; it's 99-plus percent sure, but it's not beyond any doubt. It takes some faith, albeit a very small amount, to believe it.(6) The same can be said for concluding that gravity affects all objects, not just some. The conclusion is practically certain but not absolutely certain. In other words, we can be sure beyond a reasonable doubt, but not sure beyond all doubt.

HOW ARE TRUTHS ABOUT GOD KNOWN?

So what does observation and induction have to do with discovering the existence of God? Everything. In fact, observation and induction help us investigate the ultimate religious question: "Does God exist?"

You say, "Wait a minute! How can we use observation to investigate an unobservable being called God? After all, if God is invisible and immaterial as most Christians, Jews, and Muslims claim, then how can our senses help us gather information about him?"

The answer: we use induction to investigate God the same way we use it to investigate other things we can't seeCby observing their effects. For example, we can't observe gravity directly; we can only observe its effects. Likewise, we can't observe the human mind directly, but only its effects. From those effects we make a rational inference to the existence of a cause.

In fact, the book you are now reading is a case in point. Why do you assume that this book is an effect of a human mind? Because all your observational experience tells you that a book is an effect that results only from some preexisting intelligence (i.e., an author). You've never seen the wind, the rain, or other natural forces produce a book; you've only seen people do so. So despite the fact that you didn't see anyone writing this book, you've concluded that it must have at least one author.

By reasoning that this book has an author, you are naturally putting observation, induction, and deduction together. If we were to write out your thoughts in logical form, they would look like this deductive argument:

1. All books have at least one author (premise based on inductive investigation).

2. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is a book (premise based on observation).

3. Therefore, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist has at least one author (conclusion).

You know the argument is valid because of deduction, and you know the argument is true because the premises are true (which you have verified through observation and induction).

Now here's the big question: Just as a book requires preexisting human intelligence, are there any observable effects that seem to require some kind of preexisting supernatural intelligence? In other words, are there effects that we can observe that point to God? The answer is yes, and the first effect is the universe itself. An investigation of its beginning is the next step on our journey to discover the box top.

But before we look at that evidence for the beginning of the universe, we need to address one more objection to truth. And that is, "So what? Who cares about truth?"

SO WHAT? WHO CARES ABOUT TRUTH?

We sometimes ask our students, "What's the greatest problem in America today? Is it ignorance or is it apathy?" One time a student answered, "I don't know, and I don't care!"

That sums up the problem in America today. Many of us are ignorant and apathetic about truth, but not when it comes to money, medicine, or the other tangible items we mentioned earlier. We care passionately about those things. But many people are ignorant and apathetic about truth in morality and religion (we know you're not, because you're taking the time to read this book). Are the people who have adopted the "whatever" theme of the culture right, or does truth in morality and religion really matter?

It really matters. How do we know? First, even though people may claim that truth in morality doesn't matter, they don't really believe that when someone treats them immorally. For example, they might claim that lying isn't wrong, but just watch how morally outraged they get when you lie to them (especially if it's about their money!).

We often hear that "it's the economy, Stupid!" But just think about how much better the economy would be if everyone told the truth. There would be no Enrons or Tycos. There would be no scandals or scams. There would be no burdensome government regulations. Of course the economy is important, but it's directly affected by morality! Morality undergirds virtually everything we do. It not only affects us financially, but, in certain circumstances, it also affects us socially, psychologically, spiritually, and even physically.
A second reason truth in morality matters is because success in life is often dependent on the moral choices a person makes. These include choices regarding sex, marriage, children, drugs, money, business dealings, and so on. Some choices bring prosperity, others result in ruin.

Third, as we pointed out in a previous book, Legislating Morality,(7) all laws legislate morality. The only question is, "Whose morality will be legislated?" Think about it. Every law declares one behavior right and its opposite wrong, that's morality. Whose morality should be legislated on issues such as abortion or euthanasia? These are issues that directly impact the lives and health of real people. If it's morally wrong to kill innocent people, shouldn't that truth be legislated? Likewise, whose morality should be legislated on other issues of public policy that may affect your life, health, or finances? The answers we legislate can dramatically affect every citizen's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

There's no doubt that what we believe to be true about morality directly impacts lives. Did it matter that the United States Supreme Court (as reflected in the 1857 Dred Scott decision) believed that blacks were not citizens but the property of their slave owners? Did it matter that the Nazis believed the Jews were inferior to the Aryan race? Does it matter today what we think about the moral status of people in other racial or religious categories? Of course! Truth in morality matters.

What about truth in religion? That truth can impact us even more profoundly than truth in morality. A fellow naval officer helped me (Frank) realize this back in 1988 when I was a new Christian.

At that time, we were deployed with a U.S. Navy flight crew to a Persian Gulf country. It was near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and tensions were still high. When you're in a foreign and dangerous place, you tend to ponder your life and your mortality more seriously and frequently.

One day we were doing just thatCtalking about God and the afterlife. During our conversation my friend made a comment that has stuck with me to this day. Referring to the Bible, he said, "I don't believe the Bible. But if it is true, then I'll be in big trouble."

Of course he was right. If the Bible is true, then my friend has chosen an unpleasant eternal destiny. In fact, if the Bible is true, then everyone's eternal destiny can be read from its pages. On the other hand, if the Bible is not true, then many Christians are unwittingly wasting a lot of time, money, and, in some cases, even their lives by preaching Christianity in hostile territories. Either way, truth in religion matters.

It also matters if some other religion is true. For example, if the Qur'an is true, then I'm in just as much eternal trouble as my non-Christian Navy friend. On the other hand, if the atheists are right, then we might as well lie, cheat, and steal to get what we want because this life is all there is, and there are no consequences in eternity.

But forget eternity for a minute. Consider the temporal implications of religious teachings around the world. In Saudi Arabia, some schoolchildren are being taught that Jews are pigs and that non-Muslims (infidels) should be killed (while, thankfully, a majority of Muslims do not believe that non-Muslims should be killed, militant Muslims teach that type of Jihad straight from the Qur'an(8)). Is it really true that there's a God up there by the name of Allah who wants Muslims to kill all non-Muslims (which probably includes you)? Does this religious "truth" matter? It does when those kids grow up to fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up in populated areas. Wouldn't it be better to teach them the religious truth that God wants them to love their neighbor?

The Saudis may be teaching that Jews are pigs, but in our country, by means of a one-sided biology curriculum, we teach kids that there's really no difference between any human being and a pig. After all, if we're merely the product of blind naturalistic forces, if no deity created us with any special significance, then we are nothing more than pigs with big brains. Does this religious (atheistic) "truth" matter? It does when kids carry out its implications. Instead of good citizens who see people made in the image of God, we are producing criminals who see no meaning or value in human life. Ideas have consequences.

On the positive side, Mother Teresa helped improve conditions in India by challenging the religious beliefs of many in the Hindu culture. The Hindu belief in karma and reincarnation leads many Hindus to ignore the cries of the suffering. Why? Because they believe that those who suffer deserve their plight for doing something wrong in a previous life. So, if you help suffering people, you are interfering with their karma. Mother Teresa taught Hindus in India the Christian principles of caring for the poor and suffering. Does that religious idea matter? Ask the millions whose lives she touched. Does the religious teaching of karma matter? Ask the millions still suffering.

The bottom line is this: regardless of what the real truth is concerning religion and morality, our lives are greatly affected by it today and perhaps even in eternity. Those who cavalierly say, "So what? Who cares about truth in morality and religion?" are ignoring reality and are blindly skating on thin ice. We owe it to ourselves and others to find the real truth, and then act on it. So let's get started with the question, ADoes God exist?"

SUMMARY

________________________________________________

1. People often get their beliefs from their parents, friends, childhood religion, or culture. Sometimes they simply formulate their beliefs on the basis of their feelings alone. While such beliefs could be true, it's also possible they may not be. The only way to be reasonably certain is to test beliefs by the evidence. And that is done by utilizing sound philosophical principles including those found in logic and science.9

2. Logic tells us that opposites cannot be true at the same time in the same sense. Logic is part of reality itself, and is thus the same in America, India, and everywhere in the universe.

3. By use of the Road Runner tactic, we can see that Hume is not skeptical about skepticism, and Kant is not agnostic about agnosticism. Therefore, their views defeat themselves. It is possible to know truths about God.

4. Many truths about God can be known by his effects, which we can observe. Through many observations (induction) we can draw reasonable conclusions (deductions) about the existence and nature of God (which we will do in subsequent chapters).

5. Truth in morality and religion has temporal and maybe even eternal consequences. Apathy and ignorance can be fatal. What you don't know, or don't care to know, can hurt you.

6. So why should anyone believe anything at all? Because they have evidence to support those beliefs, and because beliefs have consequences.

CHAPTER 2 WHY SHOULD ANYONE BELIEVE ANYTHING AT ALL?

1. See James Sire, "Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All?" in D. A. Carson, ed., Telling the Truth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), 93-101. See also James Sire, Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994).

2. There is, of course, inductive logic, deductive logic, and symbolic logic, but all of these are based in the same fundamental laws of thought.

3. David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, xii, 3.

4. C. S. Lewis, "Learning in War-Time," in C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), 50.

5. Of course, according to Kant, we can know things about this phenomenal world of our senses such as scientific propositions. Also, Kant held that, while we cannot know anything about the real world (e.g., God), nevertheless, we can posit that there is a God and live as if he exists, even though we can't know anything about the way he really is. This Kant called "practical" reason.

6. In fact, we arrive at most decisions in life, from what we eat to whom we choose for friends, through observation and induction. For example, we don't have perfect information about the liquid in a Campbell's Soup can, we think it's edible and won't poison us, but we're not 100 percent certain. We are relying on our prior experience that Campbell's Soup is trustworthy, and we are concluding that there's actually Campbell's Soup and not poison in the can. Likewise, we don't have perfect information about the character of people we may meet. But after spending some time with them, we may conclude that they are trustworthy people. Are we 100 percent certain? No, because we are generalizing from our limited number of experiences. Our conclusion may be highly probable, but it is not certain. This is the case with many decisions we make in life.

7. Frank Turek and Norman Geisler, Legislating Morality (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2003). Previously published by Bethany, 1998.

8. In addition to the Qur'an (read Suras 8 and 9 for yourself), see Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2002). Appendix 5 lists twenty citations from the Qur'an that either command or condone violence against "infidels."

9. Those who disagree with the necessity of logic in finding truth are defeating themselves and proving our point. Why? Because they attempt to use logic to deny logic. This is like trying to use language to communicate that language cannot be used to communicate!

HERE ARE A FEW OF THE REVIEWS THIS BOOK HAS RECEIVED

"Clear, complete, compelling, this terrific resource will help both Christians and seekers understand the rational basis for Christianity. I wish it had been available when I was an atheist, it would have saved a lot of time in my spiritual journey toward God!"

Lee Strobel author of The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith

"This extremely readable book brilliantly builds the case for Christianity from the question of truth all the way to the inspiration of the Bible. And the verdict is in: Christians stand on mounds of solid evidence while skeptics cling to nothing but their blind, dogmatic faith. If you're still a skeptic after reading I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, then I suspect you're living in denial!"

Josh McDowell speaker and author of Evidence That Demands a Verdict

"It is really true that atheism requires gobs of blind faith while the path of logic and reason leads straight to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek convincingly show why."

Phillip E. Johnson author, Darwin on Trial, Reason in the Balance, and The Wedge of Truth

"I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist will equip, exhort, and encourage you to give the reason for the hope that you have . . . with gentleness and respect."

Hank Hanegraaff President, The Christian Research Institute, and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast

"No amount of evidence can convert an unbeliever to belief. That is solely the work of God. But what Norm Geisler and Frank Turek have done in this book should disturb anyone claiming to be an atheist . . . perhaps enough to persuade them to begin a search for the God who has been there all along."

Cal Thomas Syndicated columnist and host of After Hours _on the Fox News Channel

"False ideas aimed at undermining and destroying the Christian faith constantly bombard high school and college students. This book provides an exceptionally good antidote to these false ideas. Geisler and Turek present the crucial information needed to avoid being swept away by the onslaughts of secular ideologies that cast science, philosophy, and biblical studies as enemies of the Christian faith."

William A. Dembski author, The Design Revolution

"Geisler and Turek have pulled together a wide array of thorny questions and, as always, have responded with skill and insight. This is a valuable addition to the contemporary writings on Christian apologetics."

Ravi K. Zacharias President, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

"I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is vintage Norman GeislerCa logical, rational, and intellectual defense of the Christian faith. This collaboration with Frank Turek is must reading for every professional or armchair philosopher."

John Ankerberg author and host of The John Ankerberg Show

"Anyone can understand this book's crystal-clear explanation of how morality itself points to God. Atheists may believe in moral law, but without God they have no way to justify their belief."

J. Budziszewski former atheist, professor of government and philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, author, What We Can't Not Know

www.impactapologetics.com is your one-stop site for hundreds of tapes, books, videos, DVDs and powerpoint presentations that provide convincing evidence for the truth of Christianity. It features the work of Dr. Norman Geisler, Dr. Gary Habermas, Frank Turek, and several others.

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**Trout** · May 27th 2004, 07:25 PM

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**Dee Dee Warren** · May 27th 2004, 10:05 PM

I just adore Frank. I have seen him do two seminars with Norm and they were fantastic. Yes, he has met me and has been sworn to secrecy. But he will tell you that he has met the DDW "six days!" onslaught personally.

But this book I am reading right now (thank you Frank for the copy that was way cool of you) and it is fantastic. It parallels one of the seminars that I attended.

If you guys have never seen Frank in action, it is a sight to see. He is dynamic beyond words.

**Seasanctuary** · May 28th 2004, 06:55 AM

Thanks for sharing the sample chapter. I'm in nearly complete agreement with the points made therein. (Except I kept thinking of high speed Internet for some reason...hrm.)

Originally posted by "Featured Article

1. People often get their beliefs from their parents, friends, childhood religion, or culture. Sometimes they simply formulate their beliefs on the basis of their feelings alone. While such beliefs could be true, it's also possible they may not be. The only way to be reasonably certain is to test beliefs by the evidence. And that is done by utilizing sound philosophical principles including those found in logic and science.

Personal beliefs do tend to be the result of all the areas examined in the chapter. I agree that you can't find someone who takes her beliefs via any one of those conduits.

But it definitely helps to check for logical consistancy and empirical reliability. Knowing isn't as sure as we might like, but it's not so bad either.

2. Logic tells us that opposites cannot be true at the same time in the same sense. Logic is part of reality itself, and is thus the same in America, India, and everywhere in the universe.

Agreed. At least, if it's not...I can't fathom it.

3. By use of the Road Runner tactic, we can see that Hume is not skeptical about skepticism, and Kant is not agnostic about agnosticism. Therefore, their views defeat themselves. It is possible to know truths about God.

I'd advise the more justified (from knocking down H&K) and less assumptive statement: "They've not shown it impossible to know truths about God."

4. Many truths about God can be known by his effects, which we can observe. Through many observations (induction) we can draw reasonable conclusions (deductions) about the existence and nature of God (which we will do in subsequent chapters).

Christianity does teach a highly interventionist, observable-effect causing God. So I agree in this case.

5. Truth in morality and religion has temporal and maybe even eternal consequences. Apathy and ignorance can be fatal. What you don't know, or don't care to know, can hurt you.

Of course. I doubt caring to know the truth in such matters is sufficient to find out the important truths, however. People are often Atheists or Agnostics because they note people's tendency to care about finding out such truths, and finding varying results (which can't all be correct).

6. So why should anyone believe anything at all? Because they have evidence to support those beliefs, and because beliefs have consequences.

We believe without meaning to. (For a lot of little things every day.) I appreciate that the approach in this sample chapter is not "First, come up with a philosophical justification for exact knowledge of truths...THEN you get to start believing things." Our ability to know is not so clear-cut, but then...extreme skepticism and agnosticism are too dim views (and contradictory, as pointed out).

I believe we can know in part and shouldn't exclude the possibility of a God being out there interacting with us. Indeed, considering the amount of theists, it's a worthwhile claim to investigate.

Regards,
Seasanctuary

**FormerFundy** · May 28th 2004, 10:14 AM

Since Hume and Kant violate the Law of Noncontradiction, their attempts to destroy all "religious" truths fail. However, just because Hume and Kant are wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have positive evidence for, say, the existence of God. The Road Runner tactic can only reveal that a proposition is false. It does not provide positive evidence that any particular claim is true.

I am not sure if this is Sire or Geisler here but it sounds very similar to Geisler's approach in his book Christian Apologetics (which I used when I taught apologetics). My whole problem with Geisler's approach is summed up in the quote above. His law of non-contradiction offers no positive proof for Christianity. It can eliminate some falsehoods (when enough information is known) but it cannot prove Christianity or any other religion.

**Soundsurfr** · May 28th 2004, 03:06 PM

By reasoning that this book has an author, you are naturally putting observation, induction, and deduction together. If we were to write out your thoughts in logical form, they would look like this deductive argument:

1. All books have at least one author (premise based on inductive investigation).

2. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is a book (premise based on observation).

3. Therefore, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist has at least one author (conclusion).

You know the argument is valid because of deduction, and you know the argument is true because the premises are true (which you have verified through observation and induction).

Now here's the big question: Just as a book requires preexisting human intelligence, are there any observable effects that seem to require some kind of preexisting supernatural intelligence? In other words, are there effects that we can observe that point to God? The answer is yes, and the first effect is the universe itself.

Big gaping hole in this part. The combination of observation and inductive reasoning that led you to the premise "all books have at least one author" does not exist for the premise "all universes have at least one intelligent creator". In other words, we know from observation that authors write books and we know of no other way a book could exist. Therefore we can logically deduce that if we have a book there was an author involved. However, we have NO information what it takes to have a universe exist. Even if we argue that the universe can't exist without a "pre-existing supernatural intelligence" (and how would we know that?), the same logic will hold true for the "pre-existing supernatural intelligence".

There are other very valid philosohical challenges to the arguments presented, but this one's enough for now.

**Calvinist4Him** · May 30th 2004, 02:15 AM

Originally posted by FormerFundy

My whole problem with Geisler's approach is summed up in the quote above. His law of non-contradiction offers no positive proof for Christianity. It can eliminate some falsehoods (when enough information is known) but it cannot prove Christianity or any other religion.

The law of non-contradiction isn't Geisler's, in fact, it's not Aristotle's either. Aristotle discovered the law of non-contradiction through reason, through using his intellect. The law of non-contradiction actually can be used as a proof in the TAG argument. The law of non-contradiction can falsify religions, hence considering the disagreements, it is reasonable to say "there is only one true religion" because they cannot all be true. That does not mean a false religion is entirely false, we should know that many a lie contains "grains of truth".

What the law of non-contradiction can prove, is that the basic foundation of logic is absolute, unbreakable, and unchangable. And materialism cannot account for these non-material laws which govern thought and language.

**HRG_new** · May 30th 2004, 04:46 AM

Originally posted by Apologist4Him

The law of non-contradiction isn't Geisler's, in fact, it's not Aristotle's either. Aristotle discovered the law of non-contradiction through reason, through using his intellect.

He just noted that A and not-A cannot be both true, because of the definition of the logical connective "not". This is as deep as the discovery that 2+2=4, because of the definitions of "2", "+", "=" and "4".

The law of non-contradiction actually can be used as a proof in the TAG argument. The law of non-contradiction can falsify religions,

No more than it can falsify a flat earth, just because the statements "The earth is round" and "The earth is flat" cannot both be true.

hence considering the disagreements, it is reasonable to say "there is only one true religion" because they cannot all be true.

Right. For instance Catholic Christianity and Protestant Christianity cannot both be true. But they can all be false.

That does not mean a false religion is entirely false, we should know that many a lie contains "grains of truth".

What the law of non-contradiction can prove, is that the basic foundation of logic is absolute, unbreakable, and unchangable. And materialism cannot account for these non-material laws which govern thought and language.

Not at all. Logic is governed by the semantic definitions inherent in our language. If you redefine "and" to mean the connective that we usually denote by "or", "X and not-X" becomes a tautology, instead of a contradiction.

Regards,
HRG.

"All theorems of logic state the same - to wit, nothing" (L. Wittgenstein)

**FormerFundy** · May 30th 2004, 09:50 AM

Originally posted by Apologist4Him

The law of non-contradiction isn't Geisler's, in fact, it's not Aristotle's either.

I did not mean that it belonged to him or that he developed it. What I meant was that it is the centerpiece of his apologetic.

The law of non-contradiction can falsify religions, hence considering the disagreements, it is reasonable to say "there is only one true religion" because they cannot all be true.

It is also possible that they all may be false.

What the law of non-contradiction can prove, is that the basic foundation of logic is absolute, unbreakable, and unchangable. And materialism cannot account for these non-material laws which govern thought and language.

Why not?

**Calvinist4Him** · May 30th 2004, 02:47 PM

Originally posted by FormerFundy

I did not mean that it belonged to him or that he developed it. What I meant was that it is the centerpiece of his apologetic.

Ok, thanks for the clearification.

Originally posted by FormerFundy

It is also possible that they all may be false.

Not IF one of them is true. The major task then is establishing the truths of one. This is where "worldview thinking" comes in, and the tests of a worldview http://www.reasons.org/resources/apo...sts.shtml?main

Originally posted by FormerFundy

Why not?

Why not what? Why is the law of non-contradiction absolute and unbreakable? Or Why can materialism not account for non-material entities (entities in the philosophy sense of the word)? How does materialism account for the basic laws of logic? The only answer I've heard from materialists is the man created these laws, but that simply doesn't pan out, that is not a valid answer. If logic is an invention of man, then logic is not absolute, and if logic is not absolute...do you not see the logical consequences of non-absolute logic? How can we understand anything if logic is not absolute? When someone disagrees with me, they are assuming 1.) they understand me, and 2.) that the law of non-contradiction exists and is unchanging. Othewise their disagreement and the matter they are disagreeing with are quite meaningless. We probably would not even be having this discussion were it not for postmodernism and deconstructionism. I remember reading or hearing somewhere that one cannot refute (sound) reasoning with (sound) reasoning...think about it.

**FormerFundy** · May 30th 2004, 04:54 PM

Originally posted by Apologist4Him

Ok, thanks for the clearification.

No problem.

Not IF one of them is true.

Of course but as I said they may all be false.

The major task then is establishing the truths of one. This is where "worldview thinking" comes in, and the tests of a worldview http://www.reasons.org/resources/apo...sts.shtml?main

The "tests" are very subjective and really offer no objective help to deciding between world views. For example,

2. Mean Test: Is the worldview balanced between complexity and simplicity?

An acceptable worldview will be neither too simple (reductive fallacy) nor too complex (Ockham's Razor). All things being equal, the simplest, most economical, and yet fully orbed worldview is to be preferred.

How does one objectively decide this? One person's simplicity is another person's complexity.

6. Pragmatic Test: Does the worldview promote practical and workable consequences?

An acceptable worldview will be practical, workable, sensible, and therefore "externally livable."

Once again very subjective and its doubtful that only one worldview could pass this test.

Why not what? Why is the law of non-contradiction absolute and unbreakable? Or Why can materialism not account for non-material entities (entities in the philosophy sense of the word)? How does materialism account for the basic laws of logic? The only answer I've heard from materialists is the man created these laws, but that simply doesn't pan out, that is not a valid answer.

I would not say that logic is an "invention" of man but rather that it is the result of the long evolutionary development of the human brain. Here is a good book to read and digest on the subject.

Why The Laws of Thought Are, After All, the Laws of (Evolutionary) Logic
By William D. Casebeer

Here is an on-line review of the book:

http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/cooper.html

**Calvinist4Him** · May 30th 2004, 05:44 PM

Originally posted by FormerFundy

Of course but as I said they may all be false.

Which isn't really saying much... Yeah you may or may not be a fundamentalist in disguise.

Originally posted by FormerFundy

The "tests" are very subjective and really offer no objective help to deciding between world views.

Balking at the tests? By what objective basis are the tests themselves subjective?

Originally posted by FormerFundy

How does one objectively decide this? One person's simplicity is another person's complexity.

No, one person who doesn't comprehend or understand or recognize complexity is actually wrong to mistake complexity for simplicity. In the same way, an above average intellegent person is actually wrong to mistake complexity for simplicity. Is DNA simple or complex? Are living cells simple or complex? But anyway, even if I agree that the mean test is not the test which measures all other tests, you did manage to ignore the test of coherance.

Originally posted by FormerFundy

Once again very subjective and its doubtful that only one worldview could pass this test.

The individual tests are not in a vaccum as the sole criteria, and that is why the collective results of ALL the tests should be taken into account.

Originally posted by FormerFundy

I would not say that logic is an "invention" of man but rather that it is the result of the long evolutionary development of the human brain.

Oh but you ARE saying logic is an invention of man when you claim it's the "result of the long evolutionary development of the human brain". Perhaps you could provide objective empiracally verifiable evidence of this long evolutionary development of the human brain? I believe the ancient writings of such thinkers as Socrotes, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Augustine counter such a claim.

Originally posted by FormerFundy

Here is a good book to read and digest on the subject. Why The Laws of Thought Are, After All, the Laws of (Evolutionary) Logic
By William D. Casebeer

Here is an on-line review of the book:

http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/cooper.html

oh thanks, but I found another review of the book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...=ATVPDKIKX0DER looks like 6 out of 6 people agree with the review too. Awww shucks.

**John Powell** · May 31st 2004, 12:06 AM

GEISLER/TUREK:
AUTHOR AND SPEAKER James Sire conducts an eye-opening interactive seminar for students at colleges and universities across the country. The seminar is called Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All?

POWELL:
Because it tends to improve our procreative success and our quality of life. Those who don't believe anything at all are brain dead.

G/T:
With such an intriguing title, the event usually attracts a large audience. Sire begins by asking those in attendance this question: "Why do people believe what they believe?" Despite the wide variety of answers, Sire shows that each answer he gets fits into one of these four categories: sociological, psychological, religious, and philosophical.(1)

POWELL:
What about scientific?

They're all psychological. It's the mind of each person concluding what is most likely true given the evidence.

G/T:
Sire goes through the reasons in each category by asking students, "Is that a good reason to believe something?" If he gets sharp students (like he would at Southern Evangelical Seminary!), the dialog might go something like this:

Sire:I see that many of you cited sociological factors. For example, many people have beliefs because their parents have those same beliefs. Do you think that alone is a good enough reason to believe something?

POWELL:
It's psychological, the mind trying to be coherent. Children apparently are hard-wired to trust their elders. Children who were a lot more skeptical died a lot more often before procreating.

For young children, the mere say-so of their parents coupled with what little experience they have seems to be a good reason to believe. As children mature they should rely more and more on their own experiences to judge the reliability of what others say.

G/T:
Students: No, parents can sometimes be wrong!

POWELL:
Everyone can sometimes be wrong. That's not a justified basis to ignore the say-so of one's parents.

G/R:
Sire: Okay, what about cultural influences? Do you think people ought to believe something just because it's accepted culturally?

Students: No, not necessarily. The Nazis had a culture that accepted the murder of all Jews. That sure didn't make it right!

POWELL:
It's psychological. The individual human concludes from experience that what the society believes is more likely right than wrong.

Every society can be wrong about some things. That's not a justified basis to ignore what society considers to be right.

G/R:
Sire: Good. Now, some of you mentioned psychological factors such as comfort. Is that a good enough reason to believe something?

Students: No, we're not comfortable with that! Seriously, comfort is not a test for truth. We might be comforted by the belief that there's a God out there who cares for us, but that doesn't necessarily mean he really exists. Likewise, a junkie might be temporarily comforted by a certain type of drug, but that drug might actually kill him.

POWELL:
They seem to be using "comfort" in distinct ways. They say they're not comfortable with the idea that comfort is a justified reason to believe. Evidently, that's due to the discomfort they feel.

Mental discomfort comes from incoherence: when a rational person believes as true what his mind has concluded is not true. Mental comfort arrives when the mind is coherent about its beliefs.

G/R:
Sire: So you're saying that truth is important because there can be consequences when you're wrong?

Students: Yes, if someone is wrong about a drug, they might take too much and die. Likewise, if someone is wrong about the thickness of the ice, they might fall in and freeze to death.

POWELL:
I agree that truth is important, but the reasoning given is a non sequitur. There can be consequences when you're right too.

G/R:
Sire: So for pragmatic reasons it makes sense that we should only believe things that are true.

Students:Of course. Over the long run, truth protects and error harms.

Sire: Okay, so sociological and psychological reasons alone are not adequate grounds to believe something. What about religious reasons? Some mentioned the Bible; others mentioned the Qur'an; still others got their beliefs from priests or gurus. Should you believe something just because some religious source or holy book says so?

POWELL:
They're all psychological reasons.

Apparently, rational adults NEVER believe something JUST because someone says so. Apparently, they always compare the affirmation with their experiences. IMO, efficient adults USUALLY believe what others say without checking further for external evidence.

G/R:
Students: No, because the question arises, "Whose scripture or whose source should we believe?" After all, they teach contradictory things.

Sire:Can you give me an example?

Students: Well, the Bible and the Qur'an, for example, can't both be true because they contradict one another. The Bible says that Jesus died on the cross and rose three days later (1 Cor. 15:1-8), while the Qur'an says he existed but didn't die on the cross (Sura 4:157). If one's right, the other one is wrong. Then again, if Jesus never existed, both of them are wrong.

Sire: So how could we adjudicate between, say, the Bible and the Qur'an?

Students: We need some proofs outside those so-called scriptures to help us discover which, if either, is true.

Sire: From which category could we derive such proofs?

Students: All we have left is the philosophical category.

POWELL:
What about the scientific category?

G/R:
Sire: But how can someone's philosophy be a proof? Isn't that just someone's opinion?

Students: No, we don't mean philosophy in that sense of the word, but in the classic sense of the word where philosophy means finding truth through logic, evidence, and science.

POWELL:
Philosophy means love of wisdom where wisdom is the wise use of knowledge. Science, however, IS knowledge. Philosophers can gleefully consider ideas that they believe are false, but science is focused on discovering what is true as best as is humanly possible. I think philosophy is more like the love of ideas.

Finding truth by way of examining evidence whether the evidence be a philosophical argument, a scientific observation, or a claim by a trusted authority, is a psychological process. A mental process.

G/R:
Sire: Excellent! So with that definition in mind, let's ask the same question of the philosophical category. Is something worth believing if it's rational, if it's supported by evidence, and if it best explains all the data?

POWELL:
If it best explains the data then it's supported by evidence and it's rational.

G/R:
Students:That certainly seems right to us!

By exposing inadequate justifications for beliefs, the way is cleared for the seeker of truth to find adequate justifications. This is what an apologist does. An apologist is someone who shows how good reason and evidence support or contradict a particular belief. That's what we're attempting to do in this book, and it's what Sire sets up in his seminar.

POWELL:
Well then, Sire, please explain why you're subsuming science under philosophy when philosophers don't consistently follow the scientific method.

G/R:
Sire's Socratic approach helps students realize at least three things. First, any teaching, religious or otherwise, is worth trusting only if it points to the truth. Apathy about truth can be dangerous. In fact, believing error can have deadly consequences, both temporally andCif any one of a number of religious teachings are trueCeternally as well.

POWELL:
It's worth trusting if it's more efficient at reaching the truth than any other known method. Philosophical arguments are the best way to discover coherent, "definitional" truth. Science is the best way to discover correspondence to reality truth.

Since the individual doesn't know what is truth when he sets out to discover it, he's dependent on using methods that have worked the best for him in the past.

G/R:
Second, many beliefs that people hold today are not supported by evidence, but only by the subjective preferences of those holding them.

POWELL:
IMO, all beliefs by rational persons are supported by what they consider to be evidence, reasons to believe. Otherwise, the rational person wouldn't believe it. Rational people don't believe something for no reason whatsoever, but because they have reasons, they have evidence that they think supports the belief. Whether the evidence better supports the opposing view is another matter.

G/R:
As Pascal said, people almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

POWELL:
What about those who find proofs attractive? IMO, people invariably arrive at their beliefs on the basis of what they judge to be most likely true. They work it out in their mind.

G/R:
But truth is not a subjective matter of taste, it's an objective matter of fact.

POWELL:
Yes. But what we think we know about the truth is subjective. Apparently, we don't CERTAINLY HAVE the truth. If we're lucky enough to have the truth in one case, we're apparently limited in our ability to absolutely know it. All we apparently CERTAINLY have is what we THINK is the truth.

G/R:
Finally, in order to find truth, one must be ready to give up those subjective preferences in favor of objective facts. And facts are best discovered through logic, evidence, and science.

POWELL:
Facts are best discovered through EVIDENCE, whether it be logical arguments, scientific observations, or the claims of trusted authorities.

G/R:
While using logic, evidence, and science seems the best way to get at truth, there are some who still have an objection. That objection concerns logic, namely, whose logic should we use, Eastern or Western? Ravi Zacharias tells a humorous anecdote that will reveal the answer.

WESTERN LOGIC VS. EASTERN LOGIC?

As a Christian apologist, author, and native of India, Ravi Zacharias travels the world giving evidence for the Christian faith. He has an incisive intellect and an engaging personality, which makes him a favorite on college and university campuses.

Following a recent presentation on an American campus regarding the uniqueness of Christ, Ravi was assailed by one of the university's professors for not understanding Eastern logic. During the Q&A period the professor charged, "Dr. Zacharias, your presentation about Christ claiming and proving to be the only way to salvation is wrong for people in India because you're using either-or logic. In the East we don't use either-or logic, that's Western. In the East we use both-and logic. So salvation is not either through Christ or nothing else, but both Christ and other ways."

Ravi found this very ironic because, after all, he grew up in India. Yet here was a Western-born, American professor telling Ravi that he didn't understand how things really worked in India! This was so intriguing that Ravi accepted the professor's invitation to lunch in order to discuss it further.

One of the professor's colleagues joined them for lunch, and as he and Ravi ate, the professor used every napkin and place mat on the table to make his point about the two types of logic"one Western and one Eastern."

"There are two types of logic," the professor kept insisting.

"No, you don't mean that," Ravi kept replying.

"I absolutely do!" maintained the professor.

This went on for better than thirty minutes: the professor lecturing, writing, and diagramming. He became so engrossed in making his points that he forgot to eat his meal, which was slowly congealing on his plate.

Upon finishing his own meal, Ravi decided to unleash the Road Runner tactic to rebut the confused but insistent professor. He interrupted, "Professor, I think we can resolve this debate very quickly with just one question."

Looking up from his furious drawing, the professor paused and said, "Okay, go ahead."

Ravi leaned forward, looked directly at the professor, and asked, "Are you saying that when I'm in India, I must use either the both-and logic or nothing else?"

POWELL:
No, that's not what the professor was saying.

Does a male have to be male or female or both or neither? Does the "or female or both or neither" have any utility?

G/R:
The professor looked blankly at Ravi, who then repeated his question with emphasis: "Are you saying that when I'm in India, I must use either," Ravi paused for effect, "the both-and logic or," another pause,"nothing else?"

Ravi later commented to us that the next words out of the professor's mouth were worth the time listening to his incoherent ramblings.

After glancing sheepishly at his colleague, the professor looked down at his congealed meal and mumbled, "The either-or does seem to emerge, doesn't it."

POWELL:
What SEEMS to be the case when you've been trying to explain yourself concerning a complicated philosophical issue while hungry and what IS the case might be two different things. Isn't that the case, Ravi?

So, Ravi, which is true, 1 or 2 or 3 or 4:
1. There is western logic and eastern logic
OR
2. There is western logic or eastern logic
OR
3. Both 1 and 2
OR
4. Neither 1 nor 2?

G/R:
Ravi added, "Yes, even in India we look both ways before we cross the street because it is either me or the bus, not both of us!"

POWELL:
We're all made of the same stuff, Ravi. If it weren't for the E-M force pushing atoms away from each other then the bus presumably could pass through. (How the person and the bus could keep themselves together would be another problem).

When two tributaries join their flows then which one constitutes the combined flow, Ravi, the left tributary OR the right tributary? Should I be asking "and"?

G/R:
Indeed, the either-or does seem to emerge. The professor was using the either-or logic to try and prove the both-and logic, which is the same problem everyone experiences who tries to argue against the first principles of logic.

POWELL:
The phrase "try and prove" is unacceptable form for a philosopher. It should be "try to prove." He did it right when he then said "tries to argue."

Well, Ravi, apparently you're right and the professor is right.

I prefer Western Philosophy because I think it's much closer to the way scientists think.

G/R:
They wind up sawing off the very limb upon which they sit.

Imagine if the professor had said, "Ravi, your math calculations are wrong in India because you're using Western math rather than Eastern math."

POWELL:
Your calculations are wrong because you're using simple algebraic math rather than calculus math. Does that make sense to you, Ravi?

G/R:
Or suppose he had declared, "Ravi, your physics calculations don't apply to India because you're using Western gravity rather than Eastern gravity." We would immediately see the folly of the professor's reasoning.

POWELL:
Your calculations are wrong because you're using classical physics rather than modern physics. Does that make sense to you, Ravi?

Your translation is wrong because you're using English grammar rather than Indian grammar. Does that make sense to you, Ravi?

G/R:
In fact, despite what the relativists believe, things work in the East just like they work everywhere else. In India, just like in the United States, buses hurt when they hit you, 2+2=4, and the same gravity keeps everyone on the ground. Likewise, murder is wrong there just as it is here. Truth is truth no matter what country you come from.

POWELL:
2+2=4 is true by mathematical definition. The gravity in India is not identically the same as the gravity in the United States, but the effects are very similar. Murder is wrong by definition. Is the language the same in both places? Not exactly. Is formal logic a kind of language? Yes.

G/R:
And truth is truth no matter what you believe about it.

Just as the same gravity keeps all people on the ground whether they believe in it or not, the same logic applies to all people whether they believe it or not.

POWELL:
Gravity was discovered. Formal logic was invented. Formal logic is a specialized language like mathematics. Thinking is evolutionary.

G/R:
So what's the point? The point is that there's only one type of logic that helps us discover truth.

POWELL:
That's like saying there's only one geometry: Euclidean or only one language: English.

Perhaps what you mean to say is that there's only one kind of thinking that helps us discover the truth, the kind of thinking that is thinking.

G/R:
It's the one built into the nature of reality that we can't avoid using.

POWELL:
Then why do we need to go to college to learn it if it's the language we're bound to use anyways?

G/R:
Despite this, people will try to tell you that logic doesn't apply to reality, or logic doesn't apply to God, or there are different types of logic,(2) and so on. But as they say such things, they use the very logic they are denying. This is like using the laws of arithmetic to prove that arithmetic cannot be trusted.

POWELL:
To say that logic applies to reality is like saying language or math applies to reality. The better language or math does that, the more useful to discovering truth they probably are. However, we can INVENT words and concepts and maths that don't match reality very well.

G/R:
It's important to note that we are not simply engaging in word games here. The Road Runner tactic uses the undeniable laws of logic to expose that much of what our common culture believes about truth, religion, and morality is undeniably false. That which is self-defeating cannot be true, but many Americans believe it anyway. We contradict ourselves at our own peril.

TO BE BURNED OR NOT TO BE BURNED, THAT IS THE QUESTION

The Road Runner tactic is so effective because it utilizes the Law of Noncontradiction. The Law of Noncontradiction is a self-evident first principle of thought that says contradictory claims cannot both be true at the same time in the same sense. In short, it says that the opposite of true is false. We all know this law intuitively, and use it every day.

POWELL:
Can you prove the Law of Noncontradiction without begging the question?

Maybe we've universally generalized something that almost always works.

G/R:
Suppose you see a married couple on the street one day, friends of yours, and you ask the wife if it's true that she's expecting a baby. If she says "yes" and her husband says "no," you don't say, "Thanks a lot, that really helps me!" You think, "Maybe she hasn't told him, or maybe they misunderstood the question (or maybe something worse!)." There's one thing you know for sure: they can't both be right! The Law of Noncontradiction makes that self-evident to you.

POWELL:
Wrong. They can both be right. She's expecting and he isn't. You're trying to apply the rules of formal logic which ASSUMES the LNC to the natural language which does not always assume the LNC.

G/R:
When investigating any question of fact, including the question of God, the same Law of Noncontradiction applies.

POWELL:
When using FORMAL LOGIC to investigate questions of fact then the LNC is assumed to apply.

G/R:
Either the theists are right, God exists, or the atheists are right, God doesn't exist. Both can't be correct.

POWELL:
They sure can. They can be using differing definitions for "God."

G/R:
Likewise, either Jesus died and rose from the dead as the Bible claims, or he did not as the Qur'an claims. One is right, and the other is wrong.

POWELL:
Not necessarily. Maybe those words meant different things.

When God told Adam that "in the day" that Adam ate of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil that Adam would "surely die" did God mean it?

G/R:
In fact, a medieval Muslim philosopher by the name of Avicenna suggested a surefire way to correct someone who denies the Law of Non-contradiction. He said that anyone who denies the Law of Noncontradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned! (A bit extreme, but you get the point!)

POWELL:
Appeal to force.

G/R:
While reasonable people have no problem with the Law of Noncontradiction, some very influential philosophers have denied it implicitly in their teachings.

POWELL:
Why should we conclude that LNC is true, that there are no dieletheias? Just because we've never discovered any yet? Wouldn't that be an argument from ignorance?

G/R:
Perhaps the two most influential of these are David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Many people have never heard of Hume and Kant, but their teachings have affected the modern mind greatly. That's why it's important that we take a brief look at each one of them. We'll start with Hume.

HUME'S SKEPTICISM: SHOULD WE BE SKEPTICAL ABOUT IT?

Perhaps more than any other person, David Hume is responsible for the skepticism prevalent today. As an empiricist, Hume believed that all meaningful ideas were either true by definition or must be based on sense experience. Since, according to Hume, there are no sense experiences for concepts beyond the physical, any metaphysical claims (those about concepts beyond the physical, including God) should not be believed, because they are meaningless. In fact, Hume asserted that propositions can be meaningful only if they meet one of the following two conditions:

1. The truth claim is abstract reasoning such as a mathematical equation or a definition (e.g., "2+2=4" or "all triangles have three sides"); or

2. The truth claim can be verified empirically through one or more of the five senses.

While he claimed to be a skeptic, Hume certainly wasn't skeptical about these two conditions, he was absolutely convinced he had the truth.

POWELL:
Are you absolutely convinced of that? Why? Because Hume said so?

G/R:
In fact, he concludes his Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding with this emphatic assertion: "If we take in our hand any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."(3)

Do you see the implications of Hume's two conditions? If he's correct, then any book talking about God is meaningless. You might as well use all religious writings for kindling!

POWELL:
Argument from consequences. It would be bad to use all religious writings for kindling, therefore Hume was wrong.

G/R:
Nearly two hundred years later, Hume's two conditions were converted into the "principle of empirical verifiability" by twentieth-century philosopher A. J. Ayer. The principle of empirical verifiability claims that a proposition can be meaningful only if it's true by definition or if it's empirically verifiable.

By the mid-1960s this view had become the rage in university philosophy departments across the country, including the University of Detroit where I (Norm) was a student. In fact, I took an entire class on Logical Positivism, which was another name for the brand of philosophy espoused by Ayer. The professor of that class, a Logical Positivist, was a strange breed. Though he claimed to be a Catholic, he refused to believe it was meaningful to speak about the existence of reality beyond the physical (i.e., metaphysics, God). In other words, he was an admitted atheist who told us that he wanted to convert the entire class to his brand of semantical atheism. (I once asked him, "How can you be both a Catholic and an atheist?" Ignoring two millennia of official Catholic teaching, he replied, "You don't have to believe in God to be a Catholic, you just have to keep the rules!")

POWELL:
It's my understanding that most professors of philosophy avoid this kind of missionary work.

G/R:
On the first day of that class, this professor gave the class the task of giving presentations based on chapters in Ayer's book Logic, Truth, and Language. I volunteered to do the chapter titled "The Principle of Empirical Verifiability." Now keep in mind, this principle was the very foundation of Logical Positivism and thus of the entire course.

At the beginning of the next class, the professor said, "Mr. Geisler, we'll hear from you first. Keep it to no more than twenty minutes so we can have ample time for discussion."

Well, since I was using the lightning-fast Road Runner tactic, I had absolutely no trouble with the time constraints. I stood up and simply said, "The principle of empirical verifiability states that there are only two kinds of meaningful propositions:

1) those that are true by definition and

2) those that are empirically verifiable. Since the principle of empirical verifiability itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, it cannot be meaningful."

That was it, and I sat down.

There was a stunned silence in the room. Most of the students could see the Coyote dangling in midair. They recognized that the principle of empirical verifiability could not be meaningful based on its own standard. It self-destructed in midair! In just the second class period, the foundation of that entire class had been destroyed! What was the professor going to talk about for the next fourteen weeks?

I'll tell you what he was going to talk about. Instead of admitting that his class and his entire philosophical outlook was self-defeating and thus false, the professor suppressed that truth, hemmed and hawed, and then went on to suspect that I was behind everything that went wrong for him the rest of the semester. His allegiance to the principle of empirical verifiability, despite its obvious fatal flaw, was clearly a matter of the will, not of the mind.

POWELL:
Sure, G/R, and science, which is based on views like those of Hume, is self-defeating and thus false. Let's discard science and return to the kind of philosophy that assured us that the Earth is the center of the universe.

What you've shown is that the assumptions of a philosophy are not the theorems of the philosophy. So, now let's deal with your favorite assumption.

Using logic, please prove that the LNC is true without begging the question. I concede that most things that are self-contradictory are not both true, but I do not concede that there are no dialetheias. The LNC affirms that there are no dialetheias.

It seems that philosophers are so fixated on proofs of what is certainly true that they haven't learned the lesson of science that "probably true" is sufficient. Because philosophy is unable to prove your religion to be false, G/R, apparently you hold out hope that it's true, because it could be true, despite the evidence that suggests it's probably false.

G/R:
There's a lot more to Hume, particularly his anti-miracle arguments, which we'll address when we get to chapter 8. But for now the point is this: Hume's hard empiricism, and that of his devotee A. J. Ayer, is self-defeating. The claim that "something can only be meaningful if it's empirically verifiable or true by definition" excludes itself because that statement is neither empirically verifiable nor true by definition. In other words, Hume and Ayer try to prove too much because their method of discovering meaningful propositions excludes too much. Certainly claims that are empirically verifiable or true by definition are meaningful. However, such claims don't comprise all meaningful statements as Hume and Ayer contend. So instead of committing all books about God "to the flames" as Hume suggests, you may want to consider using Hume's books to get your fire going.

KANT'S AGNOSTICISM: SHOULD WE BE AGNOSTIC ABOUT IT?

Immanuel Kant's impact has been even more devastating to the Christian worldview than David Hume's. For if Kant's philosophy is right, then there is no way to know anything about the real world, even empirically verifiable things! Why? Because according to Kant the structure of your senses and your mind forms all sense data, so you never really know the thing in itself. You only know the thing to you after your mind and senses form it.

To get a handle on this, look for a second out the window at a tree. Kant is saying that the tree you think you are looking at appears the way it does because your mind is forming the sense data you're getting from the tree. You really don't know the tree in itself; you only know the phenomena your mind categorizes about the tree. In short, you "kant" know the real tree in itself, only the tree as it appears to you.

POWELL:
Well, maybe you can sort of know the real tree in itself, but how would you absolutely know that you were right?

G/R:
Whew! Why is it that the average person on the street doesn't doubt what he sees with his own two eyes, but supposedly brilliant philosophers do?

POWELL:
Perhaps because philosophers more often love to consider ideas regardless of whether they are true or not.

G/R:
The more we study philosophy, the more we are convinced of this: if you want to make the obvious seem obscure, just let a philosopher get ahold of it!

Nevertheless, we can't avoid studying philosophy because, as C. S. Lewis said, "good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."(4) Kant's philosophy is bad philosophy, yet it has convinced many people that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the real world; that there's no way you can get any reliable knowledge about what the world is really like, much less what God is really like. According to Kant, we are locked in complete agnosticism about the real world.

POWELL:
In other words, we aren't justified in being absolutely certain of much of anything.

G/R:
Thankfully, there's a simple answer to all of this, the Road Runner tactic. Kant commits the same error as Hume, he violates the Law of Noncontradiction. He contradicts his own premise by saying that no one can know the real world while he claims to know something about it, namely that the real world is unknowable!

POWELL:
Did Kant claim to absolutely know this or did he merely believe it very strongly?

G/R:
In effect, Kant says the truth about the real world is that there are no truths about the real world.

POWELL:
What about this one?

It is probably the case that no one has the absolute truth.

G/R:
Since these self-defeating statements can stump even the sharpest minds, let's look at Kant's error another way. Kant is also making a logical fallacy called the "nothing-but" fallacy. This is a fallacy because "nothing-but" statements imply "more than" knowledge. Kant says he knows the data that gets to his brain is nothing but phenomena. But in order to know this, he would have to be able to see more than just the phenomena. In other words, in order to differentiate one thing from another thing, you have to be able to perceive where one ends and the other begins. For example, if you put a white piece of paper on a black desk, the only way you can tell where the paper ends is by seeing some of the desk that borders it. The contrast between the paper and the desk allows you to see the boundaries of the paper. Likewise, in order for Kant to differentiate the thing in the real world from that which his mind perceives, he would have to be able to see both. But this is exactly what he says can't be done! He says only the phenomena of the mind can be known, not the noumena (his term for the real world).

POWELL:
Did Kant claim to absolutely know this or did he merely believe it very strongly?

Well, gee, G/R, then isn't the LNC a "nothing-but" fallacy too?

G/R:
If there's no way to distinguish between the phenomena and noumena, then you can't see how they might differ. And if you can't see how they might differ, then it makes much more sense to assume that they are the same, in other words, that the idea in your mind accurately represents the thing in the real world.

POWELL:
What we see in our minds is similar, but different, from the real thing.

G/R:
What we are saying is that you really do know the thing in itself. You really do know the tree you are seeing because it is being impressed on your mind through your senses. In other words, Kant was wrong: your mind doesn't mold the tree, the tree molds your mind. (Just think about a wax seal: it's not the wax that impresses the seal; it's the seal that impresses the wax.) There's no gulf between your mind and the real world. In fact, your senses are your windows to the world. And senses, like windows, are that through which we look at the outside world. They are not that at which we are looking.

POWELL:
Then similarly, did Neo really "know" the things that he saw in the Matrix?

G/R:
In a philosophy class I (Norm) was teaching, I pointed out the flaws in Kant's philosophy this way. I said, "First, if Kant claims that he can't know anything about the real world (the thing in itself) then how does he know the real world is there? And second, his view is self-defeating because he claims that you can't know anything about the real world while asserting that he knows that the real world is unknowable!"(5)

One student blurted out, "No! It can't be that easy, Dr. Geisler. You can't destroy the central tenet of the last hundred-plus years of philosophical thought in just a couple of simple sentences!"

Quoting my favorite source, The Reader's Digest, I responded, "That's what happens when a beautiful theory meets a brutal gang of facts. Besides, whoever said that a refutation has to be complex? If someone makes a simple mistake, it only takes a simple correction to point it out."There's nothing complex about the Road Runner; he's simply fast and effective.

POWELL:
And you could be living in the Matrix and never know it. Isn't that so, G/R?

G/R:
HUME AND KANT ARE WRONG. SO WHAT?

Since Hume and Kant violate the Law of Noncontradiction, their attempts to destroy all "religious" truths fail.

POWELL:
Where specifically did they violate the LNC? Where did they propose a statement and it's negation as both being true?

Person A: I believe X
Person B: But, I believe ~X.

This would not be a violation of the LNC.

G/R:
However, just because Hume and Kant are wrong, that doesn't necessarily mean that we have positive evidence for, say, the existence of God. The Road Runner tactic can only reveal that a proposition is false. It does not provide positive evidence that any particular claim is true.

POWELL:
Do you absolutely know this or do you merely believe it very strongly?

G/R:
So is it true that a theistic God exists? Is there any knowable evidence that will give us reasonable certainty one way or the other? Is there such a thing as knowable evidence for an unseen God? To answer those questions, we need to investigate how truth itself can be known.

HOW IS TRUTH KNOWN?

Let's sum up what we've seen so far: truth exists, and it is absolute and undeniable.

POWELL:
Do you absolutely know this or do you believe it very strongly?

G/R:
To say "truth cannot be known" is self-defeating because that very statement claims to be a known, absolute truth.

POWELL:
Not necessarily.

G/R:
In fact, anytime we say anything, we are implying that we know at least some truth because any position on any subject implies some degree of knowledge.

POWELL:
If by "know" you mean something like "believe very strongly."

G/R:
If you say that someone's position is wrong, you must know what is right in order to say that (you can't know what is wrong unless you know what is right).

POWELL:
Ridiculous. What a person is able to claim is not necessarily identical with what is true. People can be wrong.

G/R:
Even if you say, "I don't know," you are admitting that you know something; namely, you know you don't know something else about the topic in question, not that you don't know anything at all.

POWELL:
To say you don't know is to admit that you aren't absolutely certain. Whether your belief is correct or not is a separate issue.

G/R:
But just how does one know truth? In other words, by what process do we discover truths about the world? The process of discovering truth begins with the self-evident laws of logic called first principles. They are called first principles because there is nothing behind them. They are not proved by other principles; they are simply inherent in the nature of reality and are thus self-evident. So you don't learn these first principles; you just know them. Everyone intuitively knows these principles even if they haven't thought about them explicitly.

POWELL:
Just because our minds evolved to accept them as true doesn't make them true, G/R. You want us to accept them without proof based on your CLAIM that they are inherent in the nature of reality. Where's the proof that they are inherent in the nature of reality?

What's to stop you from claiming that the existence of God is also "inherent in the nature of reality"?

G/R:
Two of these principles are the Law of Noncontradiction and the Law of the Excluded Middle. We've already seen the reality and value of the Law of Noncontradiction. The Law of the Excluded Middle tells us that something either is or is not. For example, either God exists or he does not. Either Jesus rose from the dead or he did not. There are no third alternatives.

POWELL:
Wrong. The Law of the excluded middle is that only propositions that are either true or false are allowed. It applies to formal logic. On the other hand, if it's a statement in the natural language that's not a "well formed proposition" (one that is either true or false) then it might be neither true nor false.

Is the statement "Geisler has stopped beating his wife" true or false, G?

Is the statement "Adam surely died in the day that he partook of the forbidden fruit" true or false, G?

G/R:
These first principles are the tools we use to discover all other truths. In fact, without them you couldn't learn anything else. First principles are to learning what your eyes are to seeing. Just as your eyes must be built into your body for you to see anything, first principles must be built into your mind for you to learn anything. It is from these first principles that we can learn about reality and ultimately discover the box top to this puzzle we call life.

Although we use these first principles to help us discover truth, they alone cannot tell us whether or not a particular proposition is true. To see what we mean, consider the following logical argument:

1. All men are mortal.

2. Spencer is a man.

3. Therefore Spencer is mortal.

The self-evident laws of logic tell us that the conclusion, Spencer is mortal, is a valid conclusion. In other words, the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises.

POWELL:
The conclusion necessarily follows *IF* you assume things like LNC and the excluded middle and the identity principle and consistency of meaning and that you're testing the truth values of the premises and conclusion simultaneously. Otherwise, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. The premises could be true, but the conclusion false.

G/R:
If all men are mortal and if Spencer is a man, then Spencer is mortal. However, the laws of logic do not tell us whether those premises, and thus the conclusion, is true. Maybe all men are not mortal; maybe Spencer is not a man. Logic by itself can't tell us one way or the other.

POWELL:
That's where science comes in.

G/R:
This point is more easily seen by looking at a valid argument that isn't true. Consider the following:

POWELL:
Deductive arguments are valid or invalid. Propositions (premises and conclusions) are true or false. It's misleading, I think, to speak of arguments that are true or false and conclusions or premises that are valid or invalid.

G/R:
1. All men are four-legged reptiles.

2. Zachary is a man.

3. Therefore Zachary is a four-legged reptile.

Logically, this argument is valid, but we all know it isn't true.

POWELL:
We believe that the conclusion is false if Zachary is a man. What you posted TRULY is an argument, G. Take my word for it.

G/R:
The argument is valid because the conclusion follows from the premises. But the conclusion is false because the first premise is false.

POWELL:
Not necessarily. If premise 1 were true, but premise 2 were false (Zachary is an iguana) then the conclusion could be true.

A valid deductive argument with false premises could still have a true conclusion, but a valid deductive argument with true premises CANNOT have a false conclusion.

G/R:
In other words, an argument can be logically sound but still be false because the premises of the argument do not correspond to reality.

POWELL:
Absurd. If the argument is deductively sound then BY DEFINITION the premises are true and the conclusion is true.

G/R:
So logic only gets us so far. Logic can tell us that an argument is false, but it cannot tell us by itself which premises are true. How do we know that Zachary is a man? How do we know that men are not four-legged reptiles? We need some more information to discover those truths.

POWELL:
We need science.

G/R:
We get that information from observing the world around us and then drawing general conclusions from those observations. When you observe something over and over again, you may conclude that some general principle is true. For example, when you repeatedly drop an object off a table, you naturally observe that the object always falls to the floor. If you do that enough, you finally realize that there must be some general principle in place known as gravity.

POWELL:
There VERY PROBABLY is some general principle.

G/R:
This method of drawing general conclusions from specific observations is called induction (which is commonly equated with the scientific method). In order to be clear, we need to distinguish induction from deduction. The process of lining up premises in an argument and arriving at a valid conclusion is called deduction. That's what we did in the arguments above. But the process of discovering whether the premises in an argument are true usually requires induction.

POWELL:
That's the old way of distinguishing deduction from induction. Newer textbooks on logic treat deductive arguments as those claiming that the conclusion necessarily follows given the truth of the premises whereas inductive arguments are those claiming that the conclusion probably follows given the truth of the premises.

G/R:
Much of what you know, you know by induction.

POWELL:
Most of what you "know" about things in general is by inductive rather than deductive arguments.

G/R:
In fact, you've already used induction intuitively to investigate the truth of the premises in the arguments above. Namely, you determined that since every man you've observed has been a two-legged mammal, the man Zachary cannot be a four-legged reptile.

POWELL:
And your reader is deciding whether you're probably right based on what you've written.

To say "cannot" would be a deductive fallacy (unless you define men such that they aren't 4-legged) since maybe there are men who are four-legged reptiles. You should say or clearly imply "probably is not" to be an inductive argument.

G/R:
You did the same thing with the question of Spencer's mortality. Since all men you've heard about ultimately die, you made the general conclusion that all men are mortal including a specific individual man named Spencer. These conclusions, two-legged men, gravity, and human mortality, are all inductive conclusions.

POWELL:
Then "probably" should be put there or understood to be there.

G/R:
Most conclusions based on induction cannot be considered absolutely certain but only highly probable. For example, are you absolutely, 100 percent certain that gravity makes all objects drop? No, because you haven't observed all objects being dropped. Likewise, are you absolutely certain that all men are mortal? No, because you haven't observed all men die. Perhaps there's someone somewhere who hasn't died or will not die in the future.

So if inductive conclusions are not certain, can they be trusted? Yes, but to varying degrees of certainty. As we have said before, since no human being possesses infinite knowledge, most of our inductive conclusions can be wrong. (There is one important exception. It's called the "perfect induction," where all the particulars are known. For example, Aall the letters on this page are black." This perfect induction yields certainty about the conclusion because you can observe and verify that every letter is indeed black.)

POWELL:
You aren't justified in being absolutely certain since your vision might be mistaken.

G/R:
But even when we don't have complete or perfect information, we often have enough information to make reasonably certain conclusions on most questions in life. For example, since virtually everyone has been observed to die, your conclusion that all men are mortal is considered true beyond a reasonable doubt; it's 99-plus percent sure, but it's not beyond any doubt. It takes some faith, albeit a very small amount, to believe it.(6) The same can be said for concluding that gravity affects all objects, not just some. The conclusion is practically certain but not absolutely certain. In other words, we can be sure beyond a reasonable doubt, but not sure beyond all doubt.

HOW ARE TRUTHS ABOUT GOD KNOWN?

So what does observation and induction have to do with discovering the existence of God? Everything. In fact, observation and induction help us investigate the ultimate religious question: "Does God exist?"

You say, "Wait a minute! How can we use observation to investigate an unobservable being called God? After all, if God is invisible and immaterial as most Christians, Jews, and Muslims claim, then how can our senses help us gather information about him?"

The answer: we use induction to investigate God the same way we use it to investigate other things we can't seeCby observing their effects. For example, we can't observe gravity directly; we can only observe its effects. Likewise, we can't observe the human mind directly, but only its effects. From those effects we make a rational inference to the existence of a cause.

In fact, the book you are now reading is a case in point. Why do you assume that this book is an effect of a human mind? Because all your observational experience tells you that a book is an effect that results only from some preexisting intelligence (i.e., an author). You've never seen the wind, the rain, or other natural forces produce a book; you've only seen people do so. So despite the fact that you didn't see anyone writing this book, you've concluded that it must have at least one author.

POWELL:
Probably has at least one author.

G/R:
By reasoning that this book has an author, you are naturally putting observation, induction, and deduction together. If we were to write out your thoughts in logical form, they would look like this deductive argument:

1. All books have at least one author (premise based on inductive investigation).

2. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is a book (premise based on observation).

3. Therefore, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist has at least one author (conclusion).

You know the argument is valid because of deduction, and you know the argument is true because the premises are true (which you have verified through observation and induction).

POWELL:
We can accept that the premises are true and, since it's a valid deductive argument, therefore the argument becomes an "acceptable" sound deductive argument, but that does not necessarily mean the premises are true. Maybe there are some books without an author. What about the book of life? Who was the author of that one?

G/R:
Now here's the big question: Just as a book requires preexisting human intelligence, are there any observable effects that seem to require some kind of preexisting supernatural intelligence? In other words, are there effects that we can observe that point to God? The answer is yes, and the first effect is the universe itself. An investigation of its beginning is the next step on our journey to discover the box top.

POWELL:
Apparently, to some people with strong motivation to believe in religion the universe points to a God. To atheists it doesn't.

G/R:
But before we look at that evidence for the beginning of the universe, we need to address one more objection to truth. And that is, "So what? Who cares about truth?"

SO WHAT? WHO CARES ABOUT TRUTH?

<snipped>

POWELL:
I agree that it matters.

John Powell

**FormerFundy** · May 31st 2004, 08:35 AM

Originally posted by Apologist4Him

Which isn't really saying much... Yeah you may or may not be a fundamentalist in disguise.

Its saying a whole lot. Your religion may be false.

Balking at the tests? By what objective basis are the tests themselves subjective?

The answers to the tests would have to be subjective by the nature of the case. Do you not think that Moslems believe their religion passes all the tests? Do you not think that other religions are equally convinced that they pass the test?

No, one person who doesn't comprehend or understand or recognize complexity is actually wrong to mistake complexity for simplicity. In the same way, an above average intellegent person is actually wrong to mistake complexity for simplicity. Is DNA simple or complex? Are living cells simple or complex?

There are areas where everyone would agree that something is complex. There are other areas where they would be considerable disagreement, especially when talking about religion.

The individual tests are not in a vaccum as the sole criteria, and that is why the collective results of ALL the tests should be taken into account.

Fine, but again I maintain that any Moselm who takes the test will believe that his worldview fits all the tests nicely.

Oh but you ARE saying logic is an invention of man when you claim it's the "result of the long evolutionary development of the human brain".

No I am not. The wheel is an invention of man but logic is not. Logic is simply the operating system of the brain (it operates much better in some than others).

Perhaps you could provide objective empiracally verifiable evidence of this long evolutionary development of the human brain?

As soon as you present some empircally verifiable evidence that logic came directly from the Christian god.

oh thanks, but I found another review of the book http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...=ATVPDKIKX0DER looks like 6 out of 6 people agree with the review too. Awww shucks.

Amazon reviewers? Those are not peer-reviewers such as I cited. I am not saying this book is the final word on the subject but it offers a plausible explanation of the development of logic.

**scottatiwu** · May 31st 2004, 07:23 PM

"Kant's philosophy is bad philosophy, yet it has convinced many people that there is an unbridgeable gulf between them and the real world; that there's no way you can get any reliable knowledge about what the world is really like, much less what God is really like. According to Kant, we are locked in complete agnosticism about the real world.

Thankfully, there's a simple answer to all of this, the Road Runner tactic. Kant commits the same error as Hume, he violates the Law of Noncontradiction. He contradicts his own premise by saying that no one can know the real world while he claims to know something about it, namely that the real world is unknowable! In effect, Kant says the truth about the real world is that there are no truths about the real world."

Didn't have the time to read all of the responding posts, I'm about to head to dinner, but I wanted to respond here real quick. Like I said back so many months ago when I frequented here, an absolute denial of the ability to know anything about the "real world" is unfounded, but we are still unable to have absolute certainty about the "real world." Secondly, in your point about "God-indicators," the Hume-Kantian rebutal, I assume, would be "you can't use frames of reference from within your field of experience to explain those things outside of your field of experience (with certainty)."

God Bless

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