Church Voices

“Often people will be told, ‘invite Jesus into your heart, become a Christian and then everything in your life will become great.’ They do this and then find out it’s not all happy and great and feel betrayed. So on the front end, what we ought to do is say ‘Please join up, we would love it if you became a Christian- join us and then take up your cross and we will bleed and die together. Welcome.’ We ought to be much more honest up front and then people won’t feel the bait and switch later.”

~Rob Bell, Sermon on 4/13/08

HT: Joe Martino

I can’t ask for God’s protection and expect that bad things that happen to other people won’t happen to me. I can’t ask for God to straighten out messes in a miraculous way and still honestly say I believe what scripture says about what it means to follow Christ in my life.

Jesus doesn’t run a protection racket, and he isn’t a rescue squad. He gives meaning to suffering and shows us the way of kingdom repentance and the cross. That’s where I am these days. I don’t want to tell unbelievers that God works things out for me because I’m on his team.

HT: Internet Monk

Of course we point and laugh at health and wealthers (as we should), but we also buy into a more subtle form of it when we expect to wear Jesus like a magical cloak that will repel cancer, divorce, death, pneumonia, and car accidents. If we expect becoming a Christian to be some sort of life bettering decision like earning a degree from an Ivy League university we may be in the wrong religion (if this is what you’re looking for Scientology might be a better fit), because scripture doesn’t promise us a magic carpet ride to easy street.

What we can expect from God, however, is to prepare and comfort us when life decides we’re due a gigantic heaping helping of hurt. There’s a scene in the movie Juno after which the title character has just given birth and has given up the baby for adoption. Juno is laying there, exhausted, and hurting from the pain of birth and of giving up a child, and her father strokes her hair and says, “Someday, you’ll be back here, honey. On your terms”.

Perhaps God as our Father looks a lot more like that than he does a super hero saving the day. Or maybe, that’s the only way Father God can look, because if God is nothing more than a gravytrain, or a magic shield protecting us from harm he becomes Rich Uncle God, or Banker God, and as good as it is to have a rich uncle, a super hero, or a banker, none of them are as good as Father.

“…your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
—Matthew 6:8

This Sunday I was talking to my youth minister about a conference at which he spoke over the weekend. I was told weeks in advance he was scheduled to speak but forgot that it was this past weekend. I expressed my regrets about not having prayed for him during the course of the event, which led to him mentioning his belief in retrospective prayer. Retrospective prayer, ordinarily understood, is prayer offered for events which we know have already occurred.¹ I have heard people talk about retrospective prayer before, and am even familiar with several stories where it truly seems like prayer is answered retrospectively.²

But still, it has always seemed sort of nebulous to me. What is it exactly we are praying for? Are we praying that God should bring it about that an event which already occurred did not occur? This would include even slight alterations of events, and so includes bringing it about that an event which already occurred not to have occurred in exactly the same way it did. For if past event e is altered ever so slightly, such would no longer be identical to e but would constitute an entirely new event, e’. If so, we are praying for God to perform a logical contradiction, which is impossible. No acceptable definition of omnipotence allows for God to perform logical contradictions, such as creating a square-circle, making a stone so big not even He could lift it, or causing something to exist and not exist at the same time. Similarly, it is logically contradictory to bring about something which has already occurred not to have occurred. A. J. Ayer explains, “The past is closed in the sense that what has been has been: if an event has taken place there is no way of bringing it about that it has not taken place; what is done cannot be undone.”³ The inalterability of the past is simply a matter of logic.⁴ Indeed, logic is most plausibly grounded in the nature of God Himself. This means that if changing the past is logically contradictory, God acting to change the past would amount to him acting contrary to his own nature, which is absurd. So retrospective prayer cannot involve God altering the past, as it were. So what does it involve?

Instead of God altering the past, how about the possibility of God acting in the present to bring about an event based on his foreknowledge of future prayers? This seems a bit more plausible. On this account, all retrospective prayer amounts to is asking God to have brought something about at an earlier time.⁵ For example, say, I am reminded of my youth minister’s scheduled activities this past weekend. Not yet knowing how they turned out, I pray, asking God to have spoken to the audience through his message. Suppose God grants my request. The sequence would be as follows: God, foreknowing I would pray that, answered my prayer during the time of the event. So my prayer in the present didn’t cause God to produce an event in the past (which would be contradictory), but rather God produced an event in the past (which was then the present) because His foreknowledge of my prayer in the future. Divine foreknowledge, then, is the key to understanding retrospective prayer.

Also on this account we aren’t stuck with affirming the possibility of backward causation, where effects precede their causes, which I take to be impossible. For the truth of present-tense propositions may be based on God’s knowing the truth of future-tensed propositions (as would be the case in retrospective prayer). God doesn’t produce events in the past so that their effects occur prior to their cause. Rather, He produces events in the present which are the effect of future causes.

God’s promise in Isaiah 65:24 says “I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers!” Notice that it says God will “go ahead” and answer prayer. Maybe this is hinting that God answers retrospective prayer by foreknowing the future rather than altering the past. Even though the context of this passage is set in the future, and hence hasn’t happened yet, it nonetheless implies that a retrospective prayer scenario is at least possible for God. Similarly, Daniel 9:20-21 emphasizes that while Daniel was still in prayer, God sent an answer.⁶

One thing that remains unclear to me, however, is that retrospective prayer does seem to necessarily involve ignorance on behalf of the person praying concerning the concrete outcome of the events about which they pray. For if I already knew the concrete outcome of the events about which I pray, the only thing left to pray about would be non-concrete things—things which aren’t disclosed by what we know has in fact happened—things always beyond our immediate knowledge (such as whether God has spoken through someone). When I possess knowledge of how past events have already occurred, I can’t pray for a different outcome. But that does not restrict me from praying about those things which are not disclosed by knowledge of concrete outcome. For example, suppose a woman receives a telephone call and is informed that her husband was involved in a serious car accident. That’s all she knows. Because she is ignorant about the concrete events which have already occurred (namely, whether or not he died), she can retrospectively pray for her husband’s safety. However, if during the telephone call she was informed of her husband’s death, she no longer has the option of praying for her husband’s safety. But she does still have the option of praying for non-concrete things. Suppose her husband wasn’t a Christian. She could still pray that he accepted Christ sometime before his death. Dummett also recognizes this, imagining the following scenario:

…suppose I hear on the radio that a ship has gone down in the Atlantic two hours previously, and that there were a few survivors: my son was on that ship, and I at once utter a prayer that he should have been among the survivors, that he should not have drowned; this is the most natural thing in the world. Still, there are things which it is very natural to say which make no sense; there are actions which can naturally be performed with intentions which could not be fulfilled.

Assuming that I am not asking for a miracle-asking that if my son has died, he should now be brought to life again-I do not have to be asking for a logical impossibility. I am not asking God that, even if my son has drowned, He should now make him not to have drowned; I am asking that, at the time of the disaster, He should then have made my son not to drown at that time. The former interpretation would indeed be required if the list of survivors had been read out over the radio, my son’s name had not been on it, and I had not envisaged the possibility of a mistake on the part of the news service: but in my ignorance of whether he was drowned or not, my prayer will bear another interpretation.⁷

By way of conclusion, it seems retrospective prayer can be coherently stated if God’s foreknowledge is brought into the picture. This doesn’t commit us to praying for logical contradictions, such as altering the past. But it does involve us having some sort of ignorance of the things about which we retrospectively pray (be it of the concrete events themselves or the unknown, undisclosed possibilities which accompany them). Retrospective prayer may even enjoy Biblical support. If not, however, nothing of theological significance is altered.
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1. Of course this act is accompanied by the belief that God can respond in some efficacious way, should he choose.
2. For example, in his book The Only Wise God, (from which I am drawing the main insights expressed here), William Lane Craig recalls, “…working with Campus Crusade for Christ, recruiting students to attend Expo ’72, a conference aimed at training a hundred thousand Christians in personal evangelism. In advance of the conference we heard a speaker tell of how God had used the recruitment drive in the lives of the headquarters staff. As the date for Expo ’72 drew near, he explained, applications were alarmingly low. Finally, in desperation the leadership and staff came together one weekend for intensive prayer for the conference, which at that point looked as if it were going to be a failure. As they prayed together, they experienced a sort of spiritual revival in their own hearts. And on Monday morning applications began to pour in. The speaker was not dull to the implications. ‘Those applications had to have been sent by Thursday in order to reach us Monday morning,’ he explained. ‘Therefore, God, foreknowing that we were going to pray, had already answered in advance, so that the response to our prayers came immediately!’” See The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (1999, Wipf and Stock Publishers), p. 88.
3. A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (1956, Macmillan), p. 189.
4. In the words of Oxford philosopher Michael A. E. Dummett, “…you cannot change the past; if a thing has happened, it has happened, and you cannot make it not to have happened. This is, I am told, the attitude of orthodox Jewish theologians to retrospective prayer. It is blasphemous to pray that something should have happened, for, although there are no limits to God’s power, He cannot do what is logically impossible; it is logically impossible to alter the past, so to utter a retrospective prayer is to mock God by asking Him to perform a logical impossibility.” See Dummett, “Bringing About the Past,” Philosophical Review 73 (1964): p. 341. Though as Craig points out, the inalterability of the past is only true if one assumes what he calls the “common sense view” of time; the A-theory. The Only Wise God, pp. 75-82.
5. This possibility is suggested by Dummett, “Bringing About the Past,” pp. 342-43. Of course this possibility is not open for those who do deny God’s foreknowledge.
6. Pointed out to me by Christian Penrod.
7. Dummett, “Bringing About the Past,” pp. 341-42

As the title suggests, I want to briefly explore the idea of whether or not one can still be a Christian and at the same time reject the Bible. I would answer that question in the positive. But to go any further, I’ll have to unpack what I mean by “reject.”

Reject the Bible as what? Obviously, if one rejects the Bible’s central assumptions as true, such as the existence of God or the deity of Christ, one cannot be a Christian in the Orthodox sense. So I do not think it possible to remain Christian while simultaneously denying such things (despite what the Jesus Seminar, Crossan in particular, will have you believe). I mean to ask whether it is still possible to be a Christian and hold that the Bible isn’t a reliable set of documents or is in some way historically unreliable or untrustworthy.

The question of whether the Bible is historically reliable has been a subject of much research and debate. Here I use the term “historically reliable” to refer to a document which by historical reason can be shown to host information of events that most probably happened at some point in that past. But how much does it really even matter if the Bible is historically reliable on these grounds? It seems to me not much at all, for the central truths of Christianity aren’t contingent on the reliability of scripture. This is why I think one can still be a Christian and reject the Bible as historically reliable—for even if the information in the New Testament, for instance, isn’t or can’t be shown historically reliable, it doesn’t follow that the information therein is not true.

Of course I believe the Bible is and can be shown historically reliable in this sense, but the point is this: the Bible itself is not what warrants Christian belief—rather, the source which warrants Christian belief is the Holy Spirit, who conveys the necessary truths of Christian belief to the subject (the existence of God, the gospel message, the inspiration or even the reliability of the Bible). That’s why I’m not impressed by people like Ken Ham, the die-hard King James users, or anyone else who seemingly condition Christian belief on the basis of one’s particular views on the Bible, who aren’t so much worried about concept as they are construct. That’s also why I find arguing against the reliability of scripture as evidence against Christianity to be moot.

How many times have you heard someone cast skepticism on the Bible as reason not be a Christian? This, if nothing else, would be one way to show how that excuse rings hollow.

An argument which I think is begging for a more contemporary and public defense is the conceptualist argument for the existence of God.¹ You’d be hard pressed to find it given a fair treatment of more than a few sentences at best or a passive mention at worst in a typical introductory apologetics text (and unfortunately even thicker books as well). The argument isn’t totally neglected, however. Greg Bahnsen used a form of this argument as his devastating weapon of choice in his lively debate with Gordon Stein.² More recently, William Lane Craig sometimes uses it in his some of his debates.³ Interestingly enough, prominent atheist philosopher Quinten Smith has developed a version of the conceptualist argument that has become quite popular.⁴ The conceptualist argument is named for its relevance to the philosophical view known as conceptualism, which holds that abstract objects are metaphysically grounded in the mind of an agent. But, according to the argument, abstract objects aren’t metaphysically grounded in just any mind, but an ultimate (omniscient), divine mind. That being said, the main focus of the conceptualist argument is the (seemingly) peculiar existence of abstract entities. Read the rest of this entry »

The ontological argument, roughly sketched, “purports to prove, simply from the concept of God as the supreme being, that God’s existence cannot rationally be doubted by anyone having such a concept of Him.”¹

The ontological argument, by name, has a bad reputation. Skeptics who are familiar with it at least by name are immediately inclined to dismiss it, like Arthur Schopenhauer, as merely a “charming joke.” If you’re lucky enough to get a skeptic who is willing to go beyond even a chuckle, you’ll be hard pressed to find one who then won’t, almost instinctively, remind you of Kant’s and Hume’s infamous refutations (or, if nothing else, simply dropping their names is thought to do the trick). But this isn’t only a skeptic’s observation, but one common among many who’ve considered the argument. For example, a friend once approached me for some advice on how to counter an argument favored by one of her atheist friends. In response, I equipped her with Anselm’s version of the ontological argument, for it seemed to apply. But after I explained it to her, to my surprise, her face told me she was not only dissatisfied with it as a reply to her friend’s argument, but also personally unconvinced by the argument as such (and couldn’t tell me exactly why). Others have nonetheless found it to be of great value—among which include such profound thinkers as Aquinas, Descartes and Leibniz; and contemporarily, Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcom, and Alvin Plantinga. In lieu of its controversial history, the reason for the argument’s sharp division between defenders and detractors remains unsettled. For almost everyone who has written on it has “noted that the argument has about it an air of egregious unsoundness or perhaps even trumpery and deceit; yet it is profoundly difficult to say exactly where it goes wrong.”²

Despite such a bad reputation, some of the contemporary versions of the ontological argument are considered to be sound. Perhaps the most famous of these is Plantinga’s version. Plantinga has greatly devoted himself to studying this argument, and in so doing has come out with his own form that utilizes possible world semantics. Possible world semantics is a syntax used in modal logic to illustrate modal concepts. It is helpful in illuminating the realm of possibility in the metaphysical sense (what could actually be the case given a certain logical state of affairs within a ‘world’ unlike our own). So a ‘world’ can be defined as “a maximal description of reality or a way reality might be.”³ The main thing to understand is that there can be an infinite number of possible worlds, each of which containing a different logical state of affairs (i.e. possibilities), but none of which contain logical contradictions (i.e. there can be no possible world in which a logically impossible state of affairs obtains—such as a possible world in which the proposition “cows both exist and do not exist” is true). Philosopher William Lane Craig describes it this way:

Perhaps the best way to think of a possible world is a huge conjunction p & q & r & s . . . (“&” means “and”), whose individual conjuncts are the propositions p, q, r, s, . . . A possible world is a conjunction which compromises every proposition or its contradictory, so that it yields a maximal description of reality—nothing is left out of such a description. By negating different conjuncts in a maximal description (“-” means “it is not the case that”), we arrive at different possible worlds:

W1: p & q & r & s . . .
W2: p & -q & r & -s . . .
W3: -p & -q & r & s . . .
W4: p & q & -r & s . . .

Only one of these descriptions will be composed of conjuncts all of which are true and so will be the way reality actually is, that is to say, the actual world.⁴

With that in mind, some definitions are in order to get the full gist of Plantinga’s ontological argument. In his argument, the distinction between greatness and excellence is crucial. Plantinga states “we might say that the excellence of a being in a given world W depends only upon its (non world-indexed) properties in W, which its greatness in W depends not merely upon its excellence in W, but also upon its excellence in other worlds.”⁵ In other words, a being which is maximally excellent has the three properties of omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection. A being which is maximally great is a being which has maximal excellence in all possible worlds.

Plantinga’s Ontological Argument

(1) There is a world W in which there exists a being with maximal greatness.
(2) A being has maximal greatness in a world only if it exists in every possible world.
(3) The property has maximal greatness entails⁶ the property has maximal excellence in every possible world.
(4) Maximal excellence entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection.
*(5) Maximal greatness is possibly exemplified.

But for any property P, if P is possibly exemplified, then there is a world W and an essence E such that E is exemplified in W, and E entails has P in W. So

(6) There is a world W* and an essence E* such that E* is exemplified in W* and E* entails has maximal greatness in W*.

If W* had been actual, therefore, E* would have been exemplified by an object that had maximal greatness and hence (by (3)) had maximal excellence in every possible world. So if W* had been actual, E* would have been exemplified by a being that for any world W had the property has maximal excellence in W. But every world-indexed property of an object is entailed by its essence. Hence if W* had been actual, E* would have entailed, for every world W, the property has maximal excellence in every possible world. That is, if W* had been actual, the proposition

(7) For any object x, if x exemplifies E*, then x exemplifies the property has maximal excellence in every possible world

would have been necessarily true. But what is necessarily true does not vary from world to world. Hence (7) is necessary in every world and is therefore necessary. So

(8) E* entails the property has maximal excellence in every possible world.

Now a being has a property in a world W only if it exists in that world. So E* entails the property exist in every possible world. E* is exemplified in W*; hence if W* had been actual, E* would have been exemplified by something that existed and exemplified it in every possible world. Hence

(9) If W* had been actual, it would have been impossible that E* fail to be exemplified.

But again, what is impossible does not vary form world to world hence, it is in fact impossible that E* fail to be exemplified; so E* is exemplified; so

(10) There exists a being that has maximal excellence in every world.

That is, there actually exists a being that is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect and that exists and has these properties is every possible world. This being is God.⁷

A Simpler Version of Plantinga’s Argument

Plantinga has stated his ontological argument several different ways, some more detailed than others. One of the simpler versions is as follows:

(1) It is possible that there be a being that has maximal greatness.
(2) So there is a possible being that in some world W has maximal greatness.
(3) A being has maximal greatness in a given world only if it has maximal excellence in every world.
(4) A being has maximal excellence in a given world only if it has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in that world.
*(5) There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated.

And the analogues of (3) and (4) spell out what is involved in maximal greatness:

(6) Necessarily, a being is maximally great only if it has maximal excellence in every world

and

(7) Necessarily, a being has maximal excellence in every world only if it has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every world.

But if (5) is true, then there is a possible world W such that if it had been actual, then there would have existed a being that was omnipotence, omniscient, and morally perfect; this being, furthermore, would have had these qualities in every possible world. So it follows that if W had been actual, it would have been impossible that there be no such being. That is, if W had been actual

(8) There is no omnipotence, omniscient, and morally perfect being

would have been an impossible proposition. But if a proposition is impossible in at least one possible world, then it is impossible in every possible world; what is impossible does not vary from world to world. Accordingly, (8) is impossible in the actual world, i.e., impossible simpliciter. But if it is impossible that there be no such being, then there actually exists a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect; this being, furthermore, has these qualities essentially and exists in every possible world.⁸

An Even Simpler Version of Plantinga’s Argument

William Lane Craig has offered yet a simpler statement of Plantinga’s argument, one that I’ve found to be quite helpful:

*(1) It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
(2) If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
(3) If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
(4) If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
(5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.⁹

Has Plantinga given us some insight as to how a sound version of the ontological argument might look? Some critics say not. For are not these arguments guilty of begging the question? Presumably we would not believe the key premise in each argument (I have put an asterisk before the number of the key premise in each argument), namely that “it is possible that a maximally great being exists” unless we already thought the conclusion “a maximally great being exists” is true. In other words, we can’t use as a premise in our argument what the argument is trying to establish. But are these arguments guilty of begging the question? A closer look indicates they are not. If you recall, as the possible worlds semantics are used in arguments, we are considering metaphysical possibility. Bearing this in mind it becomes clear that what the key premises entail is quite different from what the conclusion entails. For the insight behind the key premises is not whether it is epistemically possible that a maximally great being exists; that is, whether we can know such a being exists evidenced by x (such as the traditional arguments for the existence of God), but whether the a maximally excellent being is conceptually coherent and possibly exemplified—for if it isn’t, it couldn’t possibly exist in some world no matter what evidence x says.

So do we finally have a sound ontological argument? The above arguments are, without question, logically valid. So in order to determine their soundness, the question remains as to what reasons we have for thinking the key premise in each argument is true. To that effect, no one has yet been able to show the idea of a maximally great being incoherent. The great J. L. Mackie tried, but failed.¹⁰ Others have since done likewise (Flew and Kai Nielson come to mind). The burden here is obviously on one who wishes to show the idea of God, namely the attributes entailed in the property maximal excellence (omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection), internally inconsistent or incoherent. But this is yet to be done. Still some will insist that the argument fails because we cannot know a priori whether each key premise is true. But this objection is weak, if it is to be considered an objection at all. That we cannot know a priori each key premise is true is debatable, on top of the fact that knowing a priori the truth of a proposition is certainly not a good criterion for determining a proposition’s rational acceptability. Moreover, even if we didn’t have a way of knowing a priori the truth of the key premises, we could establish them on the basis of a posteriori considerations, at which point we may simply turn to some of the other traditional arguments for the existence of God.

Thus, I am convinced that Plantinga has given us a sound ontological argument after all. But for the sake of natural theology, we should, pace Anselm, at least temporarily rename the ontological argument in hopes of restoring its academic respectability.

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1. Richard Taylor, in the introduction of The Ontological Argument (Doubleday 1965), vii.
2. Alvin Plantinga, ‘The Ontological Argument’, in Philosophy of Religion (Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 180. A reprint from ‘God and Necessity’, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 196-221.
3. J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 50.
4. William Lane Craig, “The Ontological Argument,” in To Everyone An Answer (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL: 2004), p. 126.
5. Alvin Plantinga, ‘The Ontological Argument’, in Philosophy of Religion (Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 182.
6. Where, we recall, a property P entails a property Q if there is no world in which there exists an object x that has P but lacks Q.
7. Alvin Plantinga, ‘The Ontological Argument’, in Philosophy of Religion (Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 181, 183-184.
8. Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Eerdmans Publishing Co., MI: 1986), pp. 108, 111-112.
9. William Lane Craig, “The Ontological Argument,” in To Everyone An Answer (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL: 2004), p. 128.
10. J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” in The Philosophy of Religion, ed. Basil Mitchell (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 92-93. One response to Mackie, among many, can be found in Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Eerdmans Publishing Co., MI: 1986), pp. 12-24.

For what seems to be an eager desire to parallel one absurd evangelical position to another, Mr. Austin Cline at Atheism.about.com has written an article comparing my use of the phrase “atheistic lifestyle”¹ to the phrase often used in the homosexuality debate, “gay lifestyle.” Cline then defends the idea that we can write about and discuss morality in a coherent and valuable manner without using a theistic worldview.

Cline suggests that the phrase “gay lifestyle” is somehow exclusive to the evangelical community. Now this strikes me as a bit odd, if not itself a narrow ploy to parent the pejorative notion that Christians only function under an “anti-gay” mentality. It impresses me to see how much these slogans are foisted upon said people group by another, for what happens at the end of the day is the “innocent” party winds up entertaining the slogan more than those allegedly guilty. Such is the case with Mr. Cline’s and position, I fear. But admittedly, I don’t have much at all to say about homosexuality in general or the so-called “gay lifestyle” in particular, at least pertaining to anything Cline has said. Rather, my interest is to first briefly show that the parallel between the phrase “gay lifestyle” is a bad one, at least as it is drawn from anything I’ve written. Secondly, I’ll clarify a bit on my use of the phrase “atheistic lifestyle.”

I cannot speak for those who have chosen to use the phrase “gay lifestyle” and offer insight into what meaning is meant to be expressed in that. But as I understand it, the phrase is one employed almost exclusively by those who wish to illuminate a negative generalization on practicing homosexuals. As such, Cline and I can humbly agree that the phase should be avoided when people are susceptible to offense. Contrarily, my use of the phrase “atheistic lifestyle” was not meant to denote anything derogatory about those who label themselves atheists.

Now to the meat of the issue. First, a quick word should be said about what constitutes a “lifestyle.” The term ‘lifestyle’ has always seemed a bit slippery in its various usages. Simply put, a lifestyle is “a style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of a person or group.” Working under that definition of lifestyle, the term ‘atheistic lifestyle,’ as I have used it, is simply a referent to the style of living that reflects the attitudes and values of an atheist. Thus far I think it’s safe to say that Cline and I would be in agreement. However, the contention comes in when we start taking a look at what is, logically and without prevarication, the values atheism permits and how consistent those values are in the attitude and lifestyle of an atheist.

I say there is ‘nothing virtuous’ about the atheistic lifestyle simply because atheism cannot account for the existence of virtue in the first place. This is so because in a naturalist universe there could be no explanation as to how the feature of value came about in the cosmos if its whole history is due to the unfolding and rearrangements of matter. There simply will be no explanation to why things like intrinsic worth and value show up. The best explanation of this universal feature of value would be one that traces its origin back to a being who himself has value.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s grant that the atheist can, in some way, account for the existence of values. Even then it seems to me that the values that would arise from such a naturalist etiology would be so exceptionally different as to hardly merit the term virtuous (at least how it’s currently defined). Indeed, given an evolutionary picture, the values painted then would be selfishness, oppression, and whatever else would contribute to the organism’s survivability. To again use philosopher William Lane Craig to illustrate the point:²

Acts of self-sacrifice become particularly inept on a naturalistic world view. Why should you sacrifice your self-interest and especially your life for the sake of someone else? There can be no good reason for adopting such a self-negating course of action on the naturalistic world view. Considered from the socio-biological point of view, such altruistic behavior is merely the result of evolutionary conditioning which helps to perpetuate the species. A mother rushing into a burning house to rescue her children or a soldier throwing his body over a hand grenade to save his comrades does nothing more significant or praiseworthy, morally speaking, than a fighter ant which sacrifices itself for the sake of the ant hill. Common sense dictates that we should resist, if we can, the socio-biological pressures to such self-destructive activity and choose instead to act in our best self-interest. The philosopher of religion John Hick invites us to imagine an ant suddenly endowed with the insights of socio-biology and the freedom to make personal decisions. He writes:

“Suppose him to be called upon to immolate himself for the sake of the ant-hill. He feels the powerful pressure of instinct pushing him towards this self-destruction. But he asks himself why he should voluntarily . . . carry out the suicidal programme to which instinct prompts him? Why should he regard the future existence of a million million other ants as more important to him than his own continued existence? . . . Since all that he is and has or ever can have is his own present existence, surely in so far as he is free from the domination of the blind force of instinct he will opt for life–his own life.”³

Now why should we choose any differently? Life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person is just stupid. Thus the absence of moral accountability from the philosophy of naturalism makes an ethic of compassion and self-sacrifice a hollow abstraction. R. Z. Friedman, a philosopher of the University of Toronto, concludes, “Without religion the coherence of an ethic of compassion cannot be established. The principle of respect for persons and the principle of the survival of the fittest are mutually exclusive.”⁴

It would be silly to deny there (should) exist(s) individual lifestyles relative to different philosophical systems; especially those which greatly differ. Take a Christian and a nihilist, for example. If each adherent takes his or her view seriously, then we should see radically different lifestyles lived out by each—each one reflecting the attitude and values their philosophical system permits. If we are to remain objective, the comparison isn’t far off between Christianity and general atheism. This sounds good in theory, but a problem arises: generally speaking, there isn’t that radical a difference between the lifestyle of an atheist and the lifestyle of a Christian. In fact, 99% of the time I bet you wouldn’t be able to distinguish a Christian from an atheist unless you had access to personal information. So the question to be asked is this: why, if atheism and Christianity differ so greatly regarding in their philosophy (of value in particular), we don’t see radically different lifestyles?

The answer is rather simple. The typical atheist doesn’t admonish the pragmatic outworking of his own worldview. Instead, he has to borrow from mine to remain coherent. Unless Mr. Cline considers hypocrisy a virtue to be had in one’s lifestyle, it seems then there is, in fact, “truly nothing virtuous about the atheistic lifestyle.”

Finally, Cline complains that God is not necessary for us to theorize about metaethics. He states: “we can write about and discuss morality in a coherent and valuable manner without using a theistic worldview.” Now I have to be honest; this is a huge cop out. This has never been, to my knowledge, a matter of respectable contention between theists and atheists, and certainly not something I’ve ever argued. Cline is right in saying that many have written on ethics without God as a referent. But again, that possibility was never the issue. What is the issue, as was made clear in the article by Craig I cited in my initial post, is that there doesn’t exist a philosophically coherent metaethical theory apart from one that involves the existence of God, regardless of freelance theorization. Cline hasn’t even begun to argue against that point by either showing the theistic picture of morality incoherent or by developing what he thinks is a coherent atheistic one. If, on he other hand, Cline would like to look into those points rather than building straw men, perhaps that’d be of considerable interest to me. But until then it seems he will remain content with enjoying the use of concepts that have meaning only in a worldview diametrically opposed to his own.
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1. I have since taken my article Mr. Cline referenced down due to technical difficulties.
2. “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality.” Foundations 5 (1997): 9-12.
3. John Hick, Arguments for the Existence of God (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), p. 63.
4. R. Z. Friedman, “Does the ‘Death of God’ Really Matter?” International Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1983): 322.

Given the contingency of the universe (the fact that it began to exist), I’d argue that such a premise would serve as good grounds for an excellent probabilistic argument against the rivaling hypothesis that what we observe as being apparent design is due to anything other than a mind (a personal, free agent). To demonstrate this, let us first assume the soundness of the following argument:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist (I.e. the universe is contingent).
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.¹

Now let us suppose that the universe is contingent ‘C’ (2) and we observe what appears to be design ‘D’² and yet we believe D to be the result of some natural phenomena ‘N.’ Now in this case, given that we observe D and have accepted the truth of C, It seems to me that C serves as an undercutting defeater for accepting N as following D on C. If this is true, then it follows that we are not justified in believing N as an adequate explanation of D on C and must adopt a new hypothesis to take the place of N. Given our options, not-N only leads us to one other conclusion; namely, that D is the result of a mind ‘M.’

Of course, this only makes sense if you take C to in some way entail M with greater probability than N, which I think it does. For if the universe were caused to began to exist a finite time ago (C), then the only way to explain how a temporal effect could arise from a timeless cause would be if the cause were a personal agent who has the capacity to freely choose; i.e., (M):³

4. The universe was brought into being either by natural phenomena (N) or by a mind (M).
5. The universe could not have been brought into being by natural phenomena (not-N).
6. Therefore, the universe was brought into being by a mind (M). (DS, 4, 5)

And from that, we can summarize the rest of the argument as follows:

7. The universe is contingent (I.e. The universe began to exist) (C). (From 2)
8. We observe what at least appears to be design in the universe (D).

Therefore

9. The universe is contingent (C) and we observe what at least appears to be design in the universe (D). (Conj, 2, 8)
10. If we observe what at least appears to be design in the universe (D), then it is the result of either natural phenomena (N) or a mind (M).
11. It’s not the result of natural phenomena (not-N). (From 5)
12. Therefore, It’s the result of a mind (M). (From 6)
13. We observe what at least appears to be design in the universe (D).
14. The observed apparent design in the universe (D) is the result of either natural phenomena (N) or a mind (M). (MP, 10, 13)

Therefore

15. The observed apparent design in the universe (D) is the result of a mind (M). (DS, 11, 14)

Ergo, we are (at least) more justified in believing D is the result of M given C than we are N.
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1. My argument doesn’t beg the question by first assuming that God exists as following from premise (3). All premise (3) concludes is simply that the universe has a cause, not that that cause is necessarily God.
2. Though the criteria for identifying design might differ according to the kind of design looked for and/or the object in question, scarcely anyone would deny that certain facets of the universe, be they observable or unobservable, appear prima facie to be designed. In fact, most arguments against the design hypothesis are themselves attempts to explain away this apparent design-feature of the universe by way of some natural means. So the acceptance D (or premise (8) in my argument) should be uncontroversial.
3. Though not the explicit aim of my argument, we can establish M (or premise (5) of my argument) on the basis of several other arguments in addition to the one mentioned above, a couple of which I will briefly mention. First, in the words of William Lane Craig, “a changeless, mechanically operating cause would produce either an immemorial effect or none at all.” (see Craig, “Creation and Big Bang Cosmology”) Second, the only entities we know of that could be ontologically independent from the spatiotemporal universe (timeless, immaterial, et al.) are either minds or abstract objects (numbers, sets, propositions, properties, etc.). But abstract objects do not have causal powers/stand in causal relations and therefore couldn’t cause anything. Hence, the cause is by the order of a mind.

The main business of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypotheses and to deduce causes from effects, till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical: […] whence is it that nature does nothing in vain; and whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?
—Isaac Newton, Opticks 1730, Query 28.

The concept of beauty has always left me in awe. When confronted with beauty, inevitably my mind begins to meditate on things beyond that which is present during said experience. It’s not so much beauty prima facie that leaves me in wonder (although it does), but that there even is such a thing. However, as mysterious as beauty is, it is perhaps a bigger mystery to me how, given certain beauty, one cannot find it within him or herself to do likewise—begin thinking of something much more vast; something to which such aesthetic marvels owe their existence.

In his book The Existence of God, Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne lays out several “principles for assessing the explanatory power of theism” and thereafter applies them in “[probabilistic (P)] arguments to the existence of God (h) from various phenomena (e)” (with k representing background knowledge) using Bayes’s Theorem. From the nature of the principles of explanation involved, Swinburne goes on to consider the “states of affairs which we can expect to find in the world, if there is a God,” and lists seven possibilities for explaining said observed phenomena. The goal of which is to “show that it is likely that the phenomena would occur if there were a God (that [the probabilistic value of] P(e/h.k) is high).”

Among his teleological arguments, Swinburne proposes his own form of the argument from beauty wherein he entertains principle 6 of the aforementioned principles:

…[T]hat God might have reason to bring about e, and reason to allow the occurrence of e or ~e to depend on processes outside his control, but overriding reason not to bring about ~e. In this case again [the probabilistic value of] P(e/h.k) will be intermediate between 1 and 0, but, intuitively, closer to 1 than under the third, fourth, and fifth possibilities—since there is, as it were, more bias in favour of e. Finally, God may have overriding reason for not allowing ~e to occur. In that case he will himself bring about the occurrence of e; P(e/h.k) = 1.

The value of P(e/h.k) in the intermediate cases will depend, more precisely, on exactly what e is, and in cases where God allows other processes the opportunity to bring about e, how many such other processes have this opportunity, and whether, although their actions are not fully dependent on God’s will, they are in any way biased in favour of e or ~e. For example, the less specific is e (i.e. the more distinct states of affairs involve e), the more probable it is a priori that e occur—whether as a result of the action of God or of some creature given by God the opportunity to determine whether or not it occurs. Thus clearly a priori it is more probable that God bring about a universe with regular laws, than that he bring about a universe with the particular laws which our universe has. Or, if e is a state of affairs which any free agent can bring about, and God allows to each free agent the opportunity to bring e about, P(e/h.k) will be greater, the more free agents there are.

Accordingly, in Swinburne’s argument from beauty, k represents ‘an orderly physical universe’, e represents ‘a beautiful universe’, and h, the hypothesis ‘there is a God’ (in full, P(e/h.k)). The thrust of the argument is that it is more probable that God exists (h) given the existence of beauty (e) (when e is in conjunction with k) than not. He states, “A priori…there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God’s existence.” Thus, invoking the existence of God is more probable an explanation than one that doesn’t when accounting for observed beauty in the cosmos: P(e/h.k) has a greater value than P(e/k). Therefore, as Swinburne demonstrates, the argument from beauty serves as a good C-inductive argument (where the premises add to the probability of the conclusion. i.e. make the conclusion more likely or more probable than it would otherwise be) for the existence of God.

I can humbly agree with Hume’s quip that “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them,” but insofar as we agree beauty does in fact exist, what then is left for he who disbelieves but to deny beauty exists at all? Along with Swinburne (as I’m sure even apart from the rigors of philosophical reasoning), I also am therefore inclined to agree with Jean Anouilh that “Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.”

I woke up today, groggy as usual, thinking “I’m totally sleeping in first bell,” which happens to be an elective called “Single Living.” (In other words, loss of academic providence wasn’t too big a concern). But two things prevented my slumber: 1) the coffee I snuck in and 2) a surprisingly fascinating class activity.

For the past week or so, we’ve been ‘studying’ the importance of ethics and values in one’s personal development. Other than grotesque over-simplification, nothing seemed prima facie objectionable in the selected curriculum (a school textbook entitled Married & Single Life, 1992). Today, however, the reading therein expressed blatant espousal of some form of ethical relativism in its sub-chapter “Choosing Values.” Although with relativistic overtones, the section was littered with metaethical notions of right and wrong as intuitive in nature with statements like “how can you be sure the values you put high on your list are the right ones? [Emphasis mine]” For a section geared toward the choosing of one’s own values, the fallacy in the aforementioned sentence should be obvious. But that aside, it went on to attempt an answer to that very question: “When you are deciding what to value, ask yourself: Could this be harmful or destructive in any way to me or anyone else? If it could, it probably doesn’t belong on your list of values.” Then, to tie it all together with a real clincher of an example for the conclusion: “Since shoplifting is illegal and causes higher prices for everyone, the lure of excitement should not win out. In general, people agree on the basic issues of right and wrong. These are established in society and have changed very little over the years.”

The reading was followed by an activity in which nine concepts were given, the students being told to determine the value status of each from least to greatest. The options were wisdom & knowledge, spirituality, health, justice, wealth, power, love, physical beauty, and loyalty. The sad part wasn’t so much the inconsistency of the view proposed (moral relativism) in that it went from simply reducing values to being ‘established in society’ to assuming them inherently good as if platonic givens in just a matter of minutes. The sad part was observing the class’s decisions. Virtually the whole class was divided as to what they took to be the most valuable. There was no dominant category; not even love, which I thought would have been the winner out of sheer emotivism. But not one even held a majority vote. No worries, though, for the teacher was there to repeatedly assure the class that everyone was right, for it’s relative the individual (paraphrased, of course). Not that I was/am approaching this as if on some sort of higher ground than everyone else, but when you teach relativism, the result isn’t unity; that is, until an absolute is smuggled in. The class could not have illustrated more disunity about what ‘good’ was ‘best.’ But not one person stood out of unity with respect to rightly categorizing the concepts as good.

The fact of the matter is this; everything is relative until you relativise an absolute. The temptation to dismiss all the presented options as horribly perverse and to affirm rape and child molestation as good was almost overbearing. But such would have gotten me condemned by my fellow students as well as a trip to the counselor’s office at least! But so long as we take the textbook’s words as true, I don’t see how anyone could justifiably point fingers if I chose to do so, unless, of course, they thought what the textbook said was absolutely wrong.

G. K. Chesterton was one of the first thinkers to put his finger on an argument against atheism known as the problem of pleasure. This of course contrasting the argument against theism: the problem of pain. Phillip Yancey briefly mentions this in the introduction he authored in a newer release of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. Yancey writes:

Why is sex fun? Reproduction surely doesn’t require pleasure: Some animals simply split in half to reproduce, and even humans use methods of artificial insemination that involve no pleasure. Why is eating enjoyable? Plants and the lower animals manage to obtain their quota of nutrients without the luxury of taste buds. Why are there colors? Some people get along fine without the ability to detect color. Why complicate vision for all the rest of us?

[. . .]

On the issue of pleasure, Christians can breathe easier. A good and loving God would naturally want his creatures to experience delight, joy, and personal fulfillment. We Christians start from that assumption and then look for ways to explain the origin of suffering. But should atheists not have an equal obligation to explain the origin of pleasure in a world or randomness and meaninglessness?

What I find most interesting is the claim that this argument has equal force against atheism as the problem of pain does against theism:

[The problem of pleasure] looms as huge a question—the philosophical equivelent, for atheists, to the problem of pain for Christians.

Obviously this argument hasn’t received nearly as much attention as the problem of pain, but do you think what Yancey is claiming is correct? Are the two arguments, the problem of pleasure and the problem of pain equally challenging to the alternate worldviews of theism and atheism in terms of logic? (Generally speaking, being aware of the many different forms each argument could take.)