Chad Macintosh on the Conceptualist Argument for Theism

Opposed to socialism? Why stop with just opposing the public option in health care?

The reality is, some things need to be socialized, and others not. The trick in a free society is to figure out which should, and which shouldn't.

HT: Hazel Rubinstein.

Atheism: A Life without faith?

A redated post:

The title of Sam Harris's book, "The End of Faith," suggests that somehow the life of unbelief is a life without faith. Is he kidding? In the Q and A session of his debate with Douglas Jesseph William Lane Craig said that you need more faith to be an atheist than to be a Christian. You must, for example, believe that the universe arose from nothing and by nothing at the big bang, for example.

Now it seems clear even if you don't agree with Craig, you have to admit that the atheist exercises some faith. The atheist has faith that whatever we are having trouble explaining naturalistically now we will be able to explan at some time in the future.

Atheists sometimes pretend that somehow their acceptance of atheism is a purely rational choice free of emotional considerations. Really? These comments by Thomas Nagel should set this myth to rest:

TN: In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper - namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and naturally, hope that I'm right about my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

I am linking back to an old post of mine on the subject.

No Surprises Here

C. S. Lewis comes out as an Arminian.

C. S. Lewis on Hotly Criticizing Divine Justice

This is a redated post, because apparently the dialogue is still going on.

How eager ought we to be to set our standard of justice aside so that we can accept the ways of God. What Lewis is presupposing here is that our moral sense is rational, and that in a theistic universe, it should be thought to derive from God.

There is, to be sure, one glaringly obvious ground for denying that any moral purpose at all is operative in the universe: namely, the actual course of events in all its wasteful cruelty and apparent indifference, or hostility, to life. But then, as I maintain, that is precisely the ground which we cannot use. Unless we judge this waste and cruelty to be real evils we cannot of course condemn the universe for exhibiting them. Unless we take our own standard of goodness to be valid in principle (however fallible our particular applications of it) we cannot mean anything by calling waste and cruelty evils. And unless we take our own standard to be something more than ours, to be in fact an objective principle to which we are responding, we cannot regard that standard as valid. In a word, unless we allow ultimate reality to be moral, we cannot morally condemn it. The more seriously we take our own charge of futility the more we are committed to the implication that reality in the last resort is not futile at all. The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still. I cannot and never could persuade myself that such defiance is displeasing to the supreme mind. There is something holier about the atheism of a Shelley than about the theism of a Paley. That is the lesson of the Book of Job. No explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is there given: that is not the point of the poem. The point is that the man who accepts our ordinary standard of good and by it hotly criticizes divine justice receives the divine approval: the orthodox, pious people who palter with that standard in the attempt to justify God are condemned. Apparently the way to advance from our imperfect apprehension of justice to the absolute justice is not to throw our imperfect apprehensions aside but boldly to go on applying them. Just as the pupil advances to more perfect arithmetic not by throwing his multiplication table away but by working it for all it is worth.
From "De Futilitate," in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), pp.69-70.

"We're Only Human" or "Be Ye Perfect"

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were 'gods' and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

C. S. Lewis-Mere Christianity, ch. 31.

If Lewis is right, then Christianity teaches that the goal of human life is to become perfect. "We're only human" is not a satisfactory response.

From Calvinism to atheism

There is an a way of arguing from Calvinism to atheism. If the Bible is true, we have no libertarian free will (based on Calvinist arguments), but that means that God could have created us in such a way that everyone free does what is right, and everyone goes to heaven, but didn't. But a God who not only allowed sin, but also damnation, when God could just as easily have chosen their salvation is not a God worthy of worship. Hence, if the the God of the Bible exists, he is not worthy of worship (is not omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good), and hence there is no being in existence that satisfies this requirement. Therefore, atheism is true.

The closest I ever came to atheism was when I first encountered the biblical case for Calvinism. (I realize that someone will probably use this as the basis for an ad hominem argument against me. Remember, ad hominem is a fallacy.)

Denying the Cat: A Wonderful Chesterton Quote

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

C. S. Lewis on why God created us with libertarian free will

He doesn't use the phrase, of course.

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.A world of automata-of creatures that worked like machines-would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is that happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other…And for that they must be free.”
(Mere Christianity, 47-48)

The logic text on the ad hominem fallacy

•“We commit the ad hominem fallacy when we think that considerations about a person “refute” his or her assertions. Ad hominem is Latin for “to the man” indicating that it is not really the subject matter that is being addressed, but the person.

Moore and Parker, Critical Thinking, 8th edition, (McGraw-Hill, 2007) p. 174.

Birch on Calvinist Hermeneutics

The suggestion was made to me over at Triablogue that I somehow have to submit my moral intuitions to Scripture, and that the way to really be in submission to biblical authority is to come with no presuppositions whatsoever.

But does anyone really do that? Does anyone come to Scripture without some kind of hermeneutical center? Somehow, there is something terribly wrong with coming to the Bible with an initial set of perspectives as to what we should expect to find in Scripture. I admit that I come to Scripture with a hermeneutical center grounded in the love of God. As such, interpretations that conflict with that hermeneutical center, for me, carry a higher burden of proof than those that don't.

Now, of course, the paradigm can shift. I happen to have trouble imagining making that paradigm shift myself, but what I can imagine and what is possible are two different things.

But do Calvinists have a hermeneutical center? Are they more truly submissive to Scripture? Despite their moralizing about this, I doubt it. And apparently Calvinist Silva, quoted here by Birch, says that sovereignty is the underlying principle behind all Calvinist biblical interpretation.

I wish people who debate theology would study the philosophy of science. I think biblical positivism is as much a pretense in theology as logical positivism was in the philosophy of science.

Scripture doesn't speak to us in a vacuum, nor should it.

Neutrality, moral intuitions, and Calvinism

Gene M. Bridges: You've admitted in the past that you begin with your moral intuitions, not the Bible. It seems to me, you have the cart before the horse. You should submit your intuitions to the Bible first...figure out what is moral according to Scripture, then decide if what Calvinism teaches is moral or immoral.

Theoretically, that sounds good. It's kind of like Cartesian doubt in philosophy: doubt everything, and believe only what you can be sure of. Classical foundationalism it is sometimes called. But nobody really comes to the Bible, or to the study of nature for that matter, with an empty mind, but some people pretend that they do.

First, Scripture is largley responsible for how I got my intuitions in the first place. Scripture taught me that I ought to love everyone, that I ought to be like Jesus, that Jesus was God, so it looks like I ought to expect that God will love everyone. Now you're telling me that I care a lot more about my non-Christian friend's salvation than God does??

Second, my moral beliefs are part of why I believe Christianity to be true. As I understand Christianity, God's consistently loving character gives me a moral reason, as opposed to a merely prudential reason, to worship and obey him. I don't worship him because he's bigger than I am and can beat me up (the logic of the schoolyard bully) I worship him because I know that he pursues my good and the good of all whom I love.

Third Scripture deepens my moral convictions and intuitions. What I find there builds on what I believe already, and helps me see things I might have overlooked and misunderstood about what is good.

Fourth, when you use the word "intuitions" it seems always implied that these are gut feelings of some kind, when in point of fact as I understand it there is a kind of "intuition" that permits me to rationally perceive that 2 + 2 = 4. On my view, our knowledge of right and wrong is rational, not emotional. Fifth, if I were in a tradition that used a different Scripture, (the Qu'ran for instance) you would expect me to start doubting that Scripture because of its moral failings and start looking at the possibility of believing something else. If I happen to have been born in Saudi Arabia, does that mean I should submit myself to the Qu'ran and lock in my moral views based on what the Qu'ran teaches?

Finally, Scripture can certainly change my moral beliefs. But I am more sure of some of those moral beliefs than I am that such-and-such a verse was exegeted correctly by so-and-so. So in the face of at least some biblical evidence, it might be rational to believe that I don't understand everything I need to about that verse than it would be. as Lewis would say, to start believing that what I think of as black is really God's white. Opennness to God and obedience to God does not require neutrality.

I think of my belief system as a boat, not a house. You can't take out all the planks of your boat, or you will sink.

The Doctrine of Universal Compassion

Steve Hays has responded to me on Triablogue, with his usual tone and his usual tendency to read into the text all sorts of things I didn't say. I won't comment on his tone, except to say that no matter how strong his case is, he certainly makes Calvinism unattractive by the way he argues. But I am far more concerned with his eisegesis of my arguments than with whatever names he might call me.

In the debate on Calvinism, I would have to admit that the Calvinists have more debating endurance that I have, so I may not end up tracking down and responding to all the responses on the Reformed side, which will no doubt result in a claim of victory for their side. I will admit, further, that I have learned a great deal about how Calvinist think, and how they set up and understand the issue. As you know, my background is in philosophy; I have studied biblical scholarship some, and theology some as well, but that is not my area of specialization by any means. I hope I have managed to advance some considerations on the basis of my specializations that have been helpful to critics of Calvinism. However, there are some aspects of the critique of Calvinism that are better left in the hands of other than in mine.

I hold that since I find Calvinism to be morally repugnant, you need an overwhelming biblical argument to persuade me of it. That means, when it comes to the Calvinist proof texts, there has to be no logical way for the passage to be understood as teaching anything but Calvinism, and the anti-Calvinist texts have to provide no evidence whatsoever against Calvinism. I know you think this shows a lack of respect for biblical authority, but to me it's just good Bayesian epistemology.
I don't think you have to be a biblical positivist in order to accept biblical authority, or even to accept inerrancy. It's just a fact that no one comes to the Bible as a tabula rasa to be written upon by Scripture, however much they might pretend otherwise. We just have to agree to disagree on this one.

We also have to consider the possibility that a full case for or against Calvinism is not given by Scripture.

Steve says: In order to make an exegetical case for Calvinism, two and only two conditions must be met.

a) Calvinists must furnish prooftexts which, on the best interpretation, positively teach Calvinism.

b) Calvinists must show that other passages are neutral on Calvinism.

Now exactly what we mean by the "best" interpretation is going to be open to debate. Does it mean that P (the biblical passage) entails Calvinism? Or that P is more probable given Calvinism than given non-Calvinism? And what does it take to show that passages are neutral on Calvinism? Does it mean that they just have to be logically compatible with Calvinism? Or the truth of the statement is a likely given Calvinism as given non-Calvinism?

But now let's get down to what I really want to talk about.

Before you start name-calling, you might want to be a little more careful in "exegeting" what your opponent has said. What I was defending was the doctrine of divine compassion for all persons, including those alienated from God. Let's call it DUC, for Doctrine of Universal Compassion. Now the doctrine of universal compassion is held by some Calvinists, apparently including some as high up the Calvinist food chain as Carson and Piper. Bnonn seems to buy it also. I was also very explicit in saying that, up to this point, I am not claiming a proof that Calvinism is false. Now I did read your reply to Walls and Dongell and it looks as if you don't hold the doctrine of universal compassion. But some Calvinists do, and in order to provide an complete argument against Calvinism, these people have to be answered. In short I am doing the same thing that you are here, I am showing what would ordinarily be thought of as "Arminian" interpretations of these texts are in fact held by Calvinists. So let's get the issue right. The issue is the doctrine of universal compassion, not Calvinism itself. Are we clear on this?

Further, did I ever deny the doctrine of divine judgment? No.

Yes, there's going to be an argument that looks like this.

1) The doctrine of universal compassion is clearly taught by Scripture, and is therefore true.
2) If the doctrine of universal compassion is true, then Calvinism is false.
3) Therefore, Calvinism is false.

But since I'm an inductivist, you probably need a "probably" or two in there. But so far all I have defended is 1. You can be a Calvinist and accept 1. That's going to involve you in some inconsistencies, on my view, but it harmonizes better with Scripture than its denial.

But can we please correctly identify the topic under discussion?

Is heaven just a bribe?

One might ask, are people really moral if they are told that they will be rewarded in heaven for what they do? Wouldn't that be like offering someone $50 to be kind to their annoying little sister for a week?

In the $50 case, the reward is extrinsic to the deed, or the character necessary to do the deed. One idea that, for example, comes out of C. S. Lewis, is that if we are going to live forever, then unless our characters are properly formed, they will cause more and more harm to ourselves and others. The only way to be the kind of person who can enjoy eternity is someone allows God to create in him a Christlike character. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll will become boring or worse after a million years. So on this view, heaven isn't just a cash reward, it becomes possible for a person because they open themselves up to character transformation. Morally good acts reflect the kind of character that will make a heavenly life possible for a person.

HT: Steven Clauer

John Piper, or Mr. Subliminal?

But let us bring the discussion back to the original intent of the post. My claim is that if you are a Calvinist, and you are trying to be biblical (I've never heard one not say that) the approach that has the most plausibility has to be one which affirms that God loves every person and desires the salvation of every person. Some Calvinists try to exegete their way out of this conclusion by making the Bible sound like Mr. Subliminal from Saturday Night Live. The idea is that when it says God loves the whole world, or isn't willing that any should perish, or he is the savior of all, Mr. Subliminal slips in the words "just the elect."

So the Calvinist can respond by saying "We need to keep our options open," or just say the strategy that seem to be employed by Calvinists like Piper and Carson constitute the Calvinists' best shot. It's the latter option that I find more interesting. But it does put the Calvinist at the fork in the road.

We don't, of course, have an argument against Calvinism quite yet.

Can you follow Jesus without believing in God?

The information we have about what Jesus did comes from the Bible. The Bible has Jesus performing miracles and making statements that imply that he thinks he's God. He never acts as if he's just a humble carpenter's boy, he acts as if he has the right to forgive the sins of others, he says he's going to come and judge the world, he predicts his own resurrection, he goes into the temple and acts as if the place belongs to Him, he teaches the Torah without feeling that he has to refer to anything the rabbis had said about it in the past, and in some cases actually say "It says in the law of Moses X, but I say Y" suggesting that his own words supersede the Mosaic law. So the Jewish leaders asked the perfectly natural question "who in the Sam Hill do you think you are?"

None of this makes sense of course, if there is no God, and if Jesus has no special status or miraculous powers. C. S. Lewis argued that Jesus had to be liar, a lunatic, or else he had to be right and really was God. You can dodge Lewis's conclusion by arguing that the biblical sources are not accurate, and the Jesus never said or did anything that implied that he was anything more than a carpenter's son who became a charismatic Jewish preacher. But what that is going to do is leave you with no accurate sources with respect to what Jesus said and did. In which case, it's going to be hard to follow Jesus.

Piper on Divine Compassion for the Lost

The debate about Calvinism is hinges heavily, of course, on Scripture passages. To me, one of the most fundamental themes of Scripture is the universality of God's love, which is manifested in acts intended for our salvation. John 3:16 is only the tip of the iceberg. Passages like Ezekiel 18:23, I Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9 can be advanced. And there's more. I mean, there is joy amongst the angels when one sinner repents (Luke 15:10). But why, if God made the sovereign choice to bring about the repentance before the foundation of the world? Jesus wept over Jerusalem. What would there be to weep about if Jesus had the power to hit everyone in Jerusalem over the head with irresistible grace and bring them to repentance, which after all is how anybody comes to repentance, on the Calvinistic scheme. Ephesians 4:30 talks about grieving the Holy Spirit. How can you grieve someone who is unilaterally causing you to do everything you do?

The attempt to provide "Calvinist" interpretations of these passages which index God's love and compassion to the elect and only the elect strike me as just plain desperate. In the exegesis of John 3: 16, for example, it is argued that the most impressive thing about God's love for the world is God's loving that world in spite of its rebelliousness. The idea is that if we are sufficiently impressed by the fact that God loves humans even though they are sinners, we can somehow limit the scope of God's love to the elect only and still accept the sense of the text. There seem to be plenty of Calvinists who think that "world" cannot be indexed to the elect; I even recall Manata writing that D. A. Carson thinks that "world" cannot be limited in scope.

Apparently God wants us to preach the gospel to every living creature. Why? Is the offer made in good faith? How can it be if the people to whom it was made were reprobated by a sovereign choice before the foundation of the world?

There is a Calvinist response to all of this that I do think is interesting, although, at the end of the day, it doesn't work. Dongell and Walls, in Why I am Not a Calvinist (p.174) writes:

Let's turn to a more intensive effort to show that the offer of salvation for all persons can be sincere for Calvinists. This challenge is met head-on by Piper who affirms both that God unconditionally elects who will be saved and yet has compassion for and desires all people to be saved. Piper begins by citing some of the well-known texts that seem to teach God desires the salvation of all persons, such as Ezekiel 18:23, I Timothy 2:4, and 2 Peter 3:9. Unlike many Calvinist exegetes, Piper does to attempt to circumvent the straightforward meaning of these texts by saying that all means "all the elect." and not all persons without qualification. But by conceding this point, Piper has set himself a formidable project.

Yes, it's a formidable project. But the Calvinist claim that Calvinism has the full support of Scripture hinges on the success of this project. I will be talking about the project in susbsequent posts, as it is the aspect of the issue of Calvinism that really interests me. But do notice that this involves the interpretations of some passages that are more typical of Arminians than of Calvinists.

We are God's Chosen Few

Jonathan Swift penned this piece of satire centuries ago.

We are God's chosen few ;
All others will be damned.
There is no place in heaven for you :
We can't have heaven crammed.

This attitude seems prevalent still today.

Joseph Smith, the Mormon Church, and the definition of marriage

I'd love to write a dialogue between Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, who rise from their graves in fury because of the Mormon church's support for Prop 8 in California, and the present-day leaders of the Mormon Church. "You want marriage defined as a relation between one man and one woman? HOW DARE YOU? It's sure not how we defined it in our day!"

Some clarifications on the authorship of sin

OK, let me make a clarification. Indeed, the phrase "author of sin" does really need clarification. This is one way of clarifying the idea, by pointing out that on a Calvinist view the difference between a world in which I sin and one in which I don't is the result of action by God, while on an Arminian view, it looks like a world in which I don't sin is not a world that God has the power to actualize. I mean here a world identical to this one up to t. God may know this by consulting his middle knowledge, he may know it by simple foreknowledge, or he may not find out about it until it happens (open theism).

On some libertarian views, my decision today affects God's decision to instantiate the world, even though that took place before the foundation of the world. George Mavrodes, for example, is a defender of backwards causation. But all these views make my choice the deciding factor in whether I sin or not.

I take it that when the Calvinistic God is called the author of sin, however, the intent is either to argue either that God is morally blameworthy for sin, or that humans are not blameworthy for sin. The second of these claims requires an incompatibilist account of blameworthiness and, in particular, fitness for retribution.

I think a lot of secular compatibilists, such as Dennett or Schlick, see retribution as a barbarous notion, and think that holding a person morally responsible is a matter of behavior modification. In fact, my master's thesis in philosophy at Arizona State developed that idea. A person could accept some forms of compatibilism while being a cheerful incompatibilist (or incoherentist--the idea of retribution makes no sense) about retribution. A Calvinist doesn't have those options open to him. He is committed to the idea that compatibilist freedom is sufficient to make a sinner fit for retribution.

The first of these claims is that God being the author of sin in the sense described makes him blameworthy for sin. Now the point made by then-atheist/compatibilist Flew would hold if compatibilism were true, namely, that God could have created the world in such a way that everyone freely does what is right. That Calvinist will have to argue that could have does not mean should have, and that God has a reason for creating a world with sinners and even reprobates as opposed to the world of Mr. Rogers, where everyone freely does what is right.

The Calvinist response is typically that God decrees sin so that the sacrifice of Christ can be possible, and God decrees reprobation because the existence of reprobates gives God the opportunity to glorify himself through his wrath against unrepentant sin. This glorification is explained either by saying that it makes the blessed in heaven more grateful for their salvation, or by saying that it is intrinsically good for God to display his wrath as well as his mercy. I find both of these responses perverse in the extreme. But maybe that's just because I suffer from a bad case of Calvin Derangement Syndrome.

Of course, the Calvinist can also say that this is all part of God's secret will, so of course we have no idea why He does it.