My Interesting Encounter with The Rationalist

My Interesting Encounter with The Rationalist

Mar 7, 2023 | Apologetics

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I say The Rationalist not because there is one such person in the world, but because the person I encountered is the quintessential rationalist. There is a lot I want to unpack here and get off my chest so this may take several posts; we’ll see. Before I get to what a rationalist is, I will briefly explain the encounter.

I was recently on the Unbelievable? Podcast with Justin Brierly, and had an enjoyable discussion about Uninvented with an atheist, Matthew Taylor. I found out he has his own podcast, Still Unbelievable! and joked with Matthew after Justin stopped the recording that I expected an invite to be on their podcast, and he said he would do that. Lo and behold he was as good as his word. I was on recently for two and a half hours! He warned me that his co-host was not as accommodating as he is, or some such words, but I assured him I could handle it. I did, but it was grueling being interrogated by a rationalist atheist for that long. I’m sure his listeners were gleeful that yet another clueless Christian proved the superiority of their worldview. But I’m convinced he could have on C.S. Lewis come back from the dead, William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, and J. Warner Wallace all at the same time, and The Rationalist would still feel superior to we poor benighted Christians.

First, I’ll explain what a rationalist is for those not familiar with the term. In 17th century intellectual circles skepticism was on the rise. René Descartes (1596-1650), a Catholic and generally considered the founder of modern philosophy, decided he would address the challenge. He is famous, or infamous depending on one’s point of view, for defending the faith by doubting everything that could be doubted. His goal was absolute certainty because he felt that was needed to counter the skeptics. He was convinced such certainty was possible and developed detailed rules for how to attain it. The first step was finding if there was anything he could not doubt.

He eventually concluded the only thing he could not doubt was his own thinking, thus concluding cogito ergo sum, or I think therefore I am. There is certainly something to that, but it is a very thin reed upon which to hang one’s epistemology, or how we come to know what we know. My interlocutor on the podcast seems to believe that reed is a mighty oak that encompasses the entire universe. In that I’m not exaggerating because reason for him is all you got. Rationalism, along with empiricism, that true knowledge is only available via the empirical method, rounded out the Enlightenment project of the scope of man’s possible knowledge. Eventually, metaphysics was completely rejected. With these tools it was assumed mankind could figure out the true nature of reality, and unlock all the mysteries of the universe. Good luck!

Although Enlightenment intellectuals allowed God along for the ride for a century or two, they eventually kicked Him off the bus and left Him on the side of the road to fend for Himself. They could do well enough on their own. Which gets me to my interlocutor. Both he and Matthew once embraced the Christian faith, and then rejected it. We call that nowadays a “deconversion.” Many who take this path find a kind of agnosticism because they realize having absolute certainty about the ultimate nature of things isn’t really possible, so they decide to live in the space of unknowing, or agnosticism. The Rationalist, on the other hand, believes in absolute certainty, and he is absolutely certain in his certainty! It’s amazing to see this displayed in another human being. The lack of humility and what I perceived as arrogance was unpleasant to endure. If it was just a conversation over a pint I would have quickly changed the subject to the trivial like sports or the weather and I’m sure he would have been a fine person to interact with, but being a guest on their podcast, I was kind of stuck.

And while I’m targeting rationalists in this post, don’t think they’re the only ones capable of the absolute certainty delusion. It’s a sinful human trait, and plenty of Christians are guilty of it too, and people of every other religious stripe as well. It’s terribly unattractive in whatever form it’s expressed on whatever issue. I often quote the Apostle Paul: “The one who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” And I always follow with, this doesn’t call for skepticism, that we can’t know, but for epistemological humility. We can in fact know, have true knowledge, but we must realize, especially as we get older, that we don’t now a whole lot more than we do. Wisdom says, I know what I don’t know.

The reason rationalists, and I mean the true believers, are often unpleasant is because of arrogance. If you disagree with them you are wrong, full stop. They are likely not like this in the rest of their lives, but when it comes to God and Christianity, they give no quarter. The weapon of choice for The Rationalist is reason in the form of logic in the form of accusations of logical fallacies. While I am superficially referring to the gentleman I engaged in this conversation, he sounded exactly like other very intelligent atheists I’ve encountered over the years. And with such a weapon no wonder there are so few atheists in the world. Saying that I would be accused, as I was, of the popular fantasy, or some such thing. Just because something is popular doesn’t make it true. To which I replied, duh! This brings up several other fallacies he accused me of, including the straw man and red herring several times. As I thought back on the encounter, I realized he was committing the exact same fallacies he accused me of, numerous times. After I said something, he would tell me what I thought, the straw man, then chop it down.

It was impossible on the fly to challenge it effectively because first, he knows more about a lot of things than I do, and I’m not a professional apologist or debater. I’m a businessman, a sales guy, who dabbles in apologetics. In fact, and I told them this, I hate debates, never watch or listen to them. But The Rationalist seemed to think we were in a debate, and he clearly won, while proving absolutely nothing about the veracity of his worldview. In fact, I thought his arguments were for the most parts terrible, but I’m not quick enough, or knowledgeable or experienced enough to effectively have challenged him. The main problem with The Rationalist, and other rationalists I’ve encountered, is that they come off as condescending. It’s just not appealing. I agree with something Dennis Prager often says. I would rather seek clarity than agreement. I can’t convince anybody of anything, and I gave up even wanting to do that a long time ago. I’d rather have a conversation of mutual respect and understanding, try to the best of my ability to see where the other person is coming from, and let God do what God does. And that’s in any encounter with any human being in any context.

I will continue with some further thoughts about the encounter in my next post. Stay tuned.

Audiobook, Chapter 1: The Bible and Its Critics

Audiobook, Chapter 1: The Bible and Its Critics

Mar 4, 2023 | Uninvented

  • Liberal Christianity, and Its Contradictions
  • The Enlightenment Sets the Stage
  • The Effect of the Enlightenment on the Interpretation of Scripture
  • Biblical Criticism Gets Its Start: The Arbitrary Becomes the Authority
  • The First Liberal Christian
  • The Quest for the Historical Jesus

 

“The Elite Panic of 2022” and the Inevitable Fall of the Left

“The Elite Panic of 2022” and the Inevitable Fall of the Left

Mar 2, 2023 | Politics & Government

If you believe in truth, and more importantly, if you believe in He who is the Truth, you will have some sense that lies will always be exposed for what they are. Here is the truth: anything built on lies cannot endure. Light always overcome darkness. When light appears, darkness flees. It’s the nature of things.

It is impossible for that which is contrary to the created structure of reality to last, and God in his almighty sovereign control of all things will not allow it. It is my faith in God and the power of His Truth that gives me confidence that we are living in a time of great revealing. This began in the most unlikely of ways with the most unlikely person, Donald J. Trump, New York real estate billionaire and reality TV star.

It doesn’t matter what you think of the man, if you believe he’s a MAGA hero saving American, or everything his critics and enemies say he is. As Steve Bannon often says, you can spit on the ground when you hear his name, but something happened when he came down the escalator at Trump Tower in New York City on June 16, 2015. Specifically, something happened to the left. The term as I use it covers all who and what we refer to as progressives, the media, Democrats, the deep state, globalists, and RINOs of various stripes, collectively the Uniparty. They are all to one degree or another cultural Marxists (now called wokeness), and Trump broke them. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it’s a real psychological malady. We can also refer to them in the title of the piece we’ll be discussing, as the elite. What exactly was this panic last year?

I heard Martin Gurri interviewed by Mark Bauerlein on the First Things Podcast discuss his article about this elite panic. It was gratifying to have someone confirm my conviction of the ultimate futility of the ruling class. Those who get their news and information only from “approved” sources will not realize a great awakening is happening, but for those who seek and utilize alternative, “non-approved” news sources (you know, the kind where you get “disinformation”), the awakening is all over the place. I believe this awakening is ultimately spiritual and will lead to the advance of God’s kingdom and the growth of Christ’s church. The four-year assault by the deep state on Trump was the beginning of my own awakening, but it wasn’t until the covid scam, then the blatant stolen election of 2020, and finally the J6 “insurrection” FBI setup that my eyes were completely wide open.

It’s stunning how naïve I’d been all my adult life now looking back at how obvious so much of the corruption was. It is my trust in our Almighty God that keeps me from the temptation of cynicism, which is a sin. Through all of this, including finding Steve Bannon’s War Room after the 2020 election debacle, I started becoming excited about the future possibilities of our country. Up to that point I’d pretty much been a doomer, glass half empty kind of person when it came to politics and culture. In fact, I often saw the glass as not only empty, but completely dry. One of the reasons is that the only thing conservatives seemed to do is conserve the liberal/progressive gains of the last hundred years. What I call Con (conservative) Inc. (the intellectual and information ecosystem of the conservative movement) sadly turned out to be a con.

We might call what Trump initiated the great elite crack up. The ruling classes hatred of Trump (because he threatens their grift, their money and power) was (and is) so great they can’t control themselves. So they would do anything to rid the political world of the man, including lie, cheat, and steal (elections). They would even go so far as to use a contagious virous to destroy him, which the deep state and leftist media is finally admitting came from a Wuhan lab in China (honest people knew this three years ago). The “Trump-Russia collusion” lies didn’t get the job done, or the impeachment lies, but a virus from China was the perfect opportunity to distort our elections beyond recognition and get him out of office.  That, my friends, is called desperation, and a sign of weakness. The enemies of America haven’t gotten any stronger in the last two years, and thus the article confirming my convictions from Mr. Gurri. Covid was when the ruling class-elite jumped the shark. From Gurri:

Fauci embodied a bureaucracy and political class that, with the active support of the media, had converted the public’s fear of infection into a principle of elite authority. Under this principle, only trained scientists can make projections and recommendations. The writ of government stretched as far as the boundaries of scientific truth—and those boundaries were, of course, determined by government agencies. It wasn’t just a question of specific policies like lockdowns and vaccine mandates. At stake was the restoration of the public’s habit of obedience that had gone missing during the Trump years.

How dare we not passively obey the dictates of the “experts”! Some of us knew this back in the spring of 2020, and never obeyed. I knew something was very rotten in Denmark when the NCAA cancelled March Madness. What? That was the beginning of the end of sports in my life. Even college and professional sports had gone corrupt. I blame a lot of what they did on the panic porn pushed by politicians and the media, but there was zero excuse to add going woke to their Covid missteps, and I was done.

You knew the elites were desperate to protect their lies when they invented the word “disinformation,” the dumbest propaganda word in the history of dumb propaganda words. Gurri addresses the ending of the mask mandate (speaking of dumb, and evil) and Barack Obama’s speech at Stanford University a few days after a Trump appointed judge (how dare she!) in Florida struck down the mandate. As Gurri puts it, for Obama disinformation “is a form of lèse-majesté—any insult to the progressive ruling class,” which Gurri refers to as “the guardian class.” They will protect us whether we like it or not. Obviously we don’t know any better, so free speech be damned! Then Musk bought Twitter. Uh oh. Gurri nails the elite ruling class delusion:

For a considerable number of agitated people, the goal of neutrality was an abomination. Suddenly, “free speech” became a code for something dark and evil—racism, white nationalism, oligarchy, transphobia, “extremist rightwing Nazis”—all the phantoms and goblins that inhabit the nightmares of the progressive mind. Self-awareness was the first casualty of this war of words. The Washington Post, owned by multibillionaire Jeff Bezos, solemnly preached the need for regulation “to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.”

We can file that under, you just can’t make this stuff up! As Gurri adds, “the itch to control what Americans can say online was equated with the defense of freedom. Granting unfettered speech to the rabble, as Musk intended, would be ‘dangerous to our democracy.’” That would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so dangerous. Gurri makes an astute observation:

In a vague and inchoate way, the progressive elites sense that they have power but lack authority. They live in dread of a reversal in the tide of history that will bestow the future to the worst kind of people and the bloody idols they worship.

This is the irony of the third decade of the 21st century in which we live. The left controls all the levers of cultural and much of the political power, and is at the apex of their societal influence, but in this their weakness is being exposed. Even “normies” (people not obsessed with politics) are getting it. In my favorite metaphor for rule by lies, their Berlin Wall is coming down.

 

Ecclesiastes 8:17 – No One Really Comprehends and God’s Revelation

Ecclesiastes 8:17 – No One Really Comprehends and God’s Revelation

Feb 26, 2023 | Epistemology - Trust

In my recent read through the book of Ecclesiastes, I came to appreciate the seemingly contradictory perspectives of the author, who most accept as Solomon given how he identifies himself in the first verse: “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.” There were no kings in Israel’s long history who had the wealth and peace during their reigns to have the time to contemplate how meaningless life is “under the sun.” It takes a man of wealth and leisure with plenty of time on his hands to get to a point where he would conclude:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?

Here’s a cynic Woody Allen could appreciate. Yet the Teacher combines a healthy dose cynicism with a humility that realizes how little we as finite human beings can really know “under the sun.” Doing a Bible word search, we find the Teacher in our English Bibles using the phrase in the 12 chapters of the Book 27 times. I think we can safely say life on earth, not one oriented toward a heavenly city, is the dominant theme. Yet we also find him using the word God, Elohim in the Hebrew, 37 times. It is interesting, though, that he never uses the Israel’s covenant name for God, Yahweh, but the generic reference to God, El. Given his international celebrity, it’s likely his intended audience went beyond the people of Israel.

Speaking of word searches, he also uses the word meaningless some 30 times. The ESV and KJV translate that Hebrew word as vanity, defined in a variety of ways as empty, valueless, hollowness, worthlessness, futile. The Hebrew word means vapor or breath, and is also translated in various ways as such as empty, delusion, fleeting, fraud, or futile. We get the point, over and over and over again. Yet in the midst of all this futility and frustration he ends with what ultimately matters:

13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.

What prompted me to write about Ecclesiastes this time through was the Teacher’s statement in chapter 8 that after he had seen all God had done:

No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.

This hasn’t stopped human beings from trying to do just that for all of recorded history. The speculative history of philosophy, and the many varieties of religion over the ages speak to the futility of this endeavor. Man is an ultimate meaning seeking creature, even if most of the time he gets it wrong. The problem is that because of sin and man’s rebellion against God, we don’t seek Him. Jesus told us as much when he said to Nicodemus that we can’t even see the kingdom of God unless we are born again. No one chooses to be born or has any say in the matter, and Jesus doesn’t use his metaphors carelessly.

Which brings us to the Christian concept of revelation, that God has broken into the box of reality in which we find ourselves to reveal what it’s ultimately all about, or else we would be forever benighted. That word means being in a state of moral or intellectual darkness, unenlightened. If not for God breaking into the box of human existence to tell us what it all means, we are stuck with speculation and endless guessing leading nowhere but to more speculation and guessing, bumping into walls of existence concluding maybe there’s nothing outside the box after all. Human beings throughout history without revelation have concluded if there is something outside of the box, it is either not knowable, or if it is some kind of God not definable or personal, more of a force than a being we can related to on a personal level. I love the box metaphor which I learned a long time ago from the great Dutch Art Historian Hans Rookmaaker. The box of which I speak is closed and hermetically sealed because of sin, there is no way out, we are stuck.

If you want to really appreciate the value of God’s revelation to his creatures, become familiar with the history of philosophy and religion. In my Christian journey I’ve gotten to the point in my appreciation where I thank God almost every morning when I pray that he has revealed himself in three ways: creation, Scripture, and Christ. Creation drives us to Scripture which reveals God’s plans and actions in history to redeem his creation in the person and work of Christ. And as C.S. Lewis so perfectly put it:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Yet as the author of Ecclesiastes knows, comprehending, fully understanding, what goes on “under the sun” is not so simple, and in fact ultimately impossible. Yet we know enough per the Teacher just from creation (“under the sun”) that God is there and should be feared and obeyed. We also learn from Paul in Romans 1 that all human beings know enough to be “without excuse.” Then God breaks into the human heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, opening our eyes to the true ultimate meaning of existence: a redeemed relationship with our Creator through the person and work of Christ. Only a work by God outside of creation, what we often call super-natural, is the only way the box doesn’t remain our metaphysical prison.

The beauty of Christianity (the facets of stunning beauty of the diamond of salvation are limitless, literally) is that while we can know, have true knowledge because of God’s three-fold revelation, we as Paul says, “see through a glass darkly.” That is the King James Version of I Corinthians 13:12. Other translations use the word mirror and only seeing in it a dim reflection. In the first century there were no mirrors as we have them today. The Greek phrase Paul uses is esoptrou en ainigmati (ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι). The first word is glass or mirror, and in the ancient world were made of polished metal so it was difficult to get an accurate reflection. The second word means riddle or enigma. In the words of the Teacher, we really can’t comprehend what we’re seeing.

Yet what we can comprehend because true knowledge is revealed to us, we know in absolute humility and use in the love and service of others. We often hold our knowing far too firmly. Some even have a hard time admitting they could possibly be wrong . . . . about anything! As I’ve been a while along this journey with Jesus I know more then ever how little I really know, and I am far better able to know what I don’t know than what I do. In fact, Paul says it is better to be known by God than to know him, and only the latter leads to the former, even as we love because he first loved us.

Why I Am Not a Presuppositionalist, Evidentialist, or Classical Apologist

Why I Am Not a Presuppositionalist, Evidentialist, or Classical Apologist

Feb 24, 2023 | Apologetics

I am not a presuppositionalist. I don’t believe there is only one correct apologetics methodology as the presuppositionalists claim: I’m in the whatever works camp. For those not familiar with such methodologies, these are ways of going about defending the truth claims of Christianity. I’ve long been frustrated with the one-way-to-do-apologetics insistence when I learned about these methodologies at seminary in 1986. I had gotten the book Classical Apologetics by Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley where I first learned of the different apologetics camps. The subtitle drew me in: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics. These guys believed that the classical approach was the right approach to apologetics, and that frustrated me too.

Being introduced to presuppositionalism at seminary, I had a difficult time understanding it as espoused by its most famous practitioner, Cornelius Van Til. What especially frustrated me, though, was the presuppositionalist contention that their methodology is the only correct biblical apologetics method. The classical apologists, and the evidentialists as well, don’t claim theirs is the only biblical approach like the presuppositionalists, only that it’s the best or right approach. After thinking about this for 35 plus years, I am convinced there is no one biblical or correct apologetics methodology. Let me try to explain why for those who are interested in this kind of stuff.

I’ve been listening to a series on Thomas Aquinas from the Ezra Institute, and listened to an episode dedicated to his apologetics. The Ezra guys are dedicated presuppositionalists and believe it is the only valid biblical way to defend the faith. Our pastor agrees, and last year did a sermon on Acts 17 from this perspective, and it was one of the most frustrating sermons I’ve ever experienced, and that’s saying something given I’ve sat through 43(!) years of sermons. Over all these years of thinking about this, I’ve finally been able to nail down my primary frustration with presuppositionalists. I agree with most of their theology, but it’s the non sequiturs that drive me nuts.

It seems this logical fallacy is common among we sinful human beings, and I include myself in that. It simply means the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise. For example, I don’t like a movie, therefore someone concludes I don’t like all movies. The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise; I just don’t like that specific movie. The more you become aware of this sinful human tendency, the more common it becomes, like shopping for cars and the car you like seems to be everywhere. Presuppositionalists commit this logical fallacy when they declare anyone who believes in another methodology believes two things:

1. Epistemological neutrality, and 2. Autonomous reason

Number one, If I utilize or believe in a different methodology, they assert that I believe my knowing is not affected by sin and the fall. No Christian believes this, least of all Christian apologists, but presuppositionalists make this accusation all the time. Here is the non sequitur: Just because I don’t agree with their apologetics methodology, doesn’t mean I believe in epistemological neutrality. The same goes for number two. If I disagree with their methodology, they assert I believe reason isn’t tainted by sin, and able by its own unaided reasoning to come to ultimate truth. This is an absurd accusation because nobody believes it! Just because I see value in the Kalam cosmological argument, for example, doesn’t mean I think human reason is pure and untainted by sin. But presuppositionalists claim that I do.

The issue is epistemological, or how we come to know what we know. The main text used for this is Romans 1:

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

The presuppositionalists focus on verse 18, that sinful human beings suppress the truth, meaning their ontological status as sinners makes them incapable and unwilling to accept truth. All Christians believe this to one degree or another contra the presuppositionalists. No Christian apologist whatever their methodology, or like me if they don’t have one, believes in a pure reason untainted by sin that has the ability of itself to know the saving truth of Christianity. We all agree the gospel is revealed truth, and God must supernaturally open people’s minds or they will not accept it.

What is strange to me about the presuppositionalist position is that in the very next verse Paul says sinners can know about God because God has made knowledge of who he is plain to them in creation. In fact, he says, His supernatural divine being is in some way obvious! People know it whether they acknowledge it or not. These are deep philosophical waters, too deep to wade into in a blog post, but the main reason I don’t fully buy the presuppositionalist position as I understand it, is because human beings don’t work that way. The Ezra guys and others I’ve heard and read over the years make the assertion specifically about Thomas’s Five Ways, i.e., proofs for the existence of God, that these arguments don’t lead to the God of the Bible, but to some vague Aristotelian god. So? Nobody stops there and says, there, we proved God’s existence, have a great life! No, they lead them to the Scriptures to meet the true and living God, the Creator of the universe, the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There is no one “biblical” apologetics method because God uses everything to bring sinners to himself. I’ve listened to hundreds of testimonies over the last several years, and few people presuppose their way to Him. I argue from assumptions all the time when I’m talking to people, but that doesn’t mean I can only use assumptions. I believe the presuppositionalist arguments are powerful, but so is everything else God uses to reveal himself to sinners. The number of people who have come to Christ because of non-presuppositionalist apologists like Willian Lane Craig, R.C. Sproul, and C. S. Lewis is all I need to know that there is no one “biblical” apologetics methodology.

One of the podcasts I consistently listen to is the Side B Stories podcast, which is interviews of ex-atheists, agnostics, or skeptics. There are over 60 now, and I’ve listened to every one of them, and these people come to Christ in every way imaginable. The latest is this young man, Nico Tarquinio, who was profoundly affected by Bill Craig’s cosmological argument, among other traditional apologetics arguments. I don’t care what the argument or reasoning is, if it leads someone to Christ, that’s biblical enough for me!