Re: Let's start with the assumption that I am right!

For George Murphy and David Opderbeck,

On Sat Jun 3 11:34 , "George Murphy" sent:

>>
>This didn't go the 1st time.  I'll try again
>with Glenn's material snipped.
> 
>
>Glenn -
> 
>3 points here:
> 
>1)  You can't get anywhere without
>presuppositions.  Starting in that way is hardly a peculiarity of Reformed
>Presuppositional Apologetics.  You can't get Euclidean geometry
>without Euclid's postulates (or something equivalent) & you don't get
>special relativity without Einstein's 2 postulates (or something
>equivalent).  Of course that doesn't mean that those presuppositions are
>immune from challenges.  But the way in which the scientific theories based
>on certain assumptions are tested is by seeing how well & how broadly they
>explain phenomena.    
> 

George, I absolutely agree with you on this. One always has to start with assumptions of
some nature, but one doesn’t want to start with an assumption which begs the question
(let’s start with the assumption that I am always right and all others wrong). One
doesn’t want to start with contradictory assumptions because that is a situation which
can be used to prove anything whatsoever

>2)  The belief
>that God accomodated the inspiration of scripture to current cultural views of
>science, history &c need not (& I think should not) be left just as a
>brute fact or as a way to avoid embarassment.  It should be understood as
>an expression of the divine kenosis, slef-limitation, that took place in the
>Incarnation.  I don't know if you were reading the list when I mentioned my
>recent article "Couldn't God Get It Right?"  It's at
>http://www.elca.org/faithandscience/covalence/story/default.asp?Copyright=06-03-
15&Author=murphy&Pages=1 . 
>This is a very brief discussion but I hope gets my point across.
> 

Maybe it shouldn’t be left as only a way to avoid embarrassing conclusions, but for the
life of me, I can’t see any other reason it is used. Why? Because it isn’t applied to
the existence of the Roman empire. No one goes and talks about how Roman history was
accommodated to the poor historical knowledge of the early Christians. Accommodation is
only applied when someone doubts that the Bible is telling us historical or scientific
fact. Can you name one instance of accommodation being applied to anything we know is
historically correct?

>3)  You (& others) ask, if God accomodated
>to current science, why not to current theology?  To a certain extent we do
>have to recognize that the revelation of God & his will has been
>progressive, as I noted in an earlier post.  (Abraham didn't know about the
>Trinity.)  But there's a more fundamental point.  God didn't need to
>reveal accurate physics, astronomy, biology, geology &c because we can
>figure out those things with our own brains and observational abilities. 
>In fact, for God to communicate them directly would have short-circuited the
>whole process of human maturation.  But we can't understand who God
>is & God's will for us just from our observations & use of our brains
>because of the fudamental problem of sin.  That's the point that Paul makes
>in Romans 1:18-23.
> 

Well, I for one am not asking God to write 7th grade science texts. But I am asking that
God, when inspiring men about things which can be observed, that he inspire the truth.
And if God had no ability to inspire the truth, it raises fundamental questions about his
power, or lack thereof.

For David Opderbeck

David Opderebeck wrote:

>>>>Well, yeah, but the atheist does the same thing. Read Flew's essay in that
Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology book, for example. Flew argues (as
do most atheists) that we should start from the presumption that there is no God, and
that theists therefore bear the burden of proof. But why should this be so? Glenn,
you've had a little trouble clearly articulating your own epsitemic stance in this
thread -- and I don't mean this in an sort of snarky way, but I see the stance you've
been driving at as essentially the same as Flew's. It seems that you're internalizing an
atheistic religious epistemology perhaps without fully articulating it. <<<

You haven’t paid attention, then. When people on this list keep charging me with having a
YEC epistemology, I constantly point out that I think more like an atheist than a YEC.
Thus, I have fully articulated it.

 
>>>>But why is the atheistic epistemic stance more reasonable than assuming that God
exists? As Roy Clouser has I think presuasively argued, the presumption of atheism is
itself a religious presumption. One of the touchstones of Reformed presuppositional
epistemology is this question of which "religious" presupposition is more reasonable.<<<

No presupposition is correct which assumes that one position is right and all others are
wrong. That is a massive logical fallacy called ‘begging the question.’ As a lawyer, I
am amazed that you don’t recognize this.

 
>>>The statement in your article that Reformed presuppositional apologetics disregards
evidence entirely isn't completely true, then. Van Til's thinking is much more subtle on
this point. It's more a question of the worldview glasses one wears when viewing certain
kinds of evidence. <<<

But this is saying that there is no real, objective truth. YECs say this, OEC’s say
this, but it is a path which basically says truth is subjective. And if it is, then the
truth for the Tibetan is equivalent to our truth and the truth for the fanatical
islamacist who says we must die is equally valid.
 
>>>Now, some of my Reformed bretheren will disagree with me here, but I personally would
grant that Van Til's epistemology, even as sort of modified by contemporary thinkers like
John Frame, has a weakness in that it relies too heavily on a concept of "certainty"
based on subjective emotional experience. I wrote in some detail about why this is a
problem for me recently on my blog (
http://www.davidopderbeck.com/archives/2006/05/certainty_certi_1.html).
 
This is one reason, as I mentioned before, that I would characterize my own epistemic
stance as a "web-based" one that incorporates aspects of the presuppositional view. For
the "web-based" metaphor and religious epistemology, I've found Nancey Murphy's "Beyond
Fundamentalism and Liberalism" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563381761/sr=8-
1/qid=1149344944/ref=sr_1_1/102-9712995-3999361?%5Fencoding=UTF8 )
to be an excellent reasource that makes some compelling arguments. (Last year I wrote in
some detail on my blog about my thoughts at that time about this:
http://www.davidopderbeck.com/archives/2005/02/the_nature_of_t.html) <<<<

When you right: In contrast, the web metaphor does not necessarily make man the final
measuring stick of truth. Truth claims that are beyond the reach of human perception and
reason can help anchor the web.”

To me it means that you would be unable to know if the Bible is true or not. This is a
classic argument for solipcism as far as I can see.
 
One thing I hope to do in the future is to explore how Reformed philospher Herman
Dooyeweerd's epistemology (see here for summary:
http://www.isi.salford.ac.uk/dooy/knowing.html#epist ) might tie some of these different
strands of my own still-evolving thinking on this together. (If anyone here is a
Dooyeweerd maven, I'd love to hear from you).

By the way, I am going to note here that you still show me no evidence of understanding
the difference between apologetics and epistemology. They are NOT the same thing.

You can see that they are not the same.
a•pol•o•get•ics P Pronunciation Key ( -p l -j t ks)
n. (used with a sing. verb)
1. The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of
Christian doctrines.
2. Formal argumentation in defense of something, such as a position or system.
e•pis•te•mol•o•gy P Pronunciation Key ( -p s t -m l -j )
n.
The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and
foundations, and its extent and validity.
.
Secondly, that book you linked to is not a book about apologetics. It also doesn’t have
any plantinga article. I think you got the wrong link. That book has chapters entitled
The Presumption of atheism
The problem of evil and some varieties of atheism
Atheistic teleological arguments
Atheological apologetics
Faith skepticism and religious understanding
The groundlessness of belief
Theology atheism and theism
Does religious skepticism rest on a mistake
Received on Sat Jun 3 13:38:48 2006