Mar 31, 2019 | Epistemology - Trust
Some years ago I had an Instant Message conversation with a co-worker of mine. It had something to do with religion, and I’ll never forget a phrase she used: “For me, I’ll stick with science.” It was not the forum to challenge such a hollow contention, but it was indicative how many Americans and Westerners think. When we reflect on epistemology, which few people do (unfortunately most Christians as well), the question is how and if we can actually know things. Or in other words, can we have confidence that the things we know are in fact true. In the 21st century secular West the default position is that science is the only reliable way we can know things (scientism). Everything else is guess work or preference, or “true for you, but not for me.” Science can indeed give us wonderful and helpful knowledge, but it is dubious thing upon which to place our trust for true knowledge, and an extremely thin reed upon which to stake all our knowing.
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Jan 27, 2019 | Apologetics, Epistemology - Trust
A favorite tactic of skeptics to justify their rejection of God is to take some example of what God has ostensibly done or does, and assert that if there was a God he certainly wouldn’t have done it this way or that. The silliest direct example of this in my life happened before the Internet, in a letter writing exchange with a university professor I didn’t know. He claimed that if there was such a being as God that he would never make other beings who, how do I put this politely, need to defecate to rid the body of waste. That, to him, was a deal breaker: God cannot exist! I was incredulous. Seriously? You can’t come up with anything better?
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Dec 22, 2018 | Epistemology - Trust
Until recently, I had never thought of revelation as a gift. God’s revealing himself and the truth about the nature of reality just was what it was, revelation. I can’t remember now where I’d read this phrase, but it struck me as profound. Humanity without revelation, without something beyond human experience and knowledge, is in every sense benighted. That is, we are “in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance.” In other words, we don’t have a clue! Most Christians, unfortunately, don’t act as if God’s revelation to us is a gift. Our tendency, all of us, is to take it for granted. (more…)
Dec 5, 2018 | Epistemology - Trust
The history of philosophy is a fascinating study, and one Christians need to be familiar with. Most Christians, however, think that philosophy is for “intellectuals,” and not something they would be interested in or could understand. Yes, much philosophy is esoteric and difficult to understand, but the basic ideas really are’t. This is important because history reveals what ideas have given us the world we inhabit, and it’s culture, in the 21st century. In other words, in the title of an influential book by Richard Weaver written in 1948, Ideas Have Consequences. To take the title one step further, and as I’ve heard numerous times from the folks at Breakpoint and the Colson Center, “Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.” Many of the consequences of the ideas bequeathed to us from Western thinkers have been good, but the bad ones have been really, really bad. In fact, we live with the consequences of both every day. The bloody 20th century, with north of 100 million people killed, was a result of very bad ideas. (more…)
Apr 14, 2018 | Epistemology - Trust, Explanatory Power
According to the current secularist worldview the only sure epistemological foundation (basis for knowing) is science. At some point in the last hundred or so years through popular culture, education, and media, science replaced religion in the modern imagination as the governing authority of how we’re to run our lives. But something unexpected has happened on the way to the coronation of King Science.
It has long been been assumed by secular, educated Western cultural elites that growing scientific knowledge would one day make religion superfluous. Science would supposedly tell us everything we need to know, and once we knew everything God would no longer be necessary to explain what can’t be explained. Scientific knowledge, however, is increasingly leading us in just the opposite direction. On both the micro and macro level, from the tiniest nano particle, to the existence of the universe itself, the amazing explosion of scientific knowledge is leading to very uncomfortable, for the secularist, metaphysical questions.
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Sep 20, 2017 | Epistemology - Trust
One of my great frustrations in our secular age is how the concepts of “faith” and “belief” are communicated and understood. Too many Christians unknowingly acquiesce in using these terms that bias the cultural conversation against Christianity. What do I mean?
An article at The Veritas Forum is a great example. The title tells the tale: “The Dilemma of Faith in a Secular Age.” What does this assume? That “faith” and secularism are two separate concepts and have nothing to do with one another. The writer of the piece, unfortunately, accepts the dichotomy of “faith” and secularism as if they had nothing to do with one another—they do. She gives only one indication that all people struggle with what they believe when she says that “believers and non-believers alike struggle with doubt about whether our beliefs are indeed the right ones.” But using the terms “believers” and “non-believers” assumes that some people believe and others don’t, which plays into secularist hands.
The author writes about a poet who “has frequently written about this sense of being caught between belief and unbelief.” Again, the assumption is that such a thing “unbelief” exists—it doesn’t. In fact, every human being, regardless of whether they are “religious” or not, is fundamentally religious, i.e., they live by faith. It is crucial that we as Christians, and Christian parents, realize this.
Our secular Western culture tries to convince us that only “religious” people need faith—this is simply not true. At the level of presuppositions, all human beings are equal. Everyone has limited knowledge, therefore everyone lives by faith to one degree or another. The question is, which “faith” makes the most sense of reality as we find it, and which has the best evidence to make a claim on our allegiance. These questions must be at the forefront of raising kids in the 21st century West.
Thus the “the secular objectivity double standard.” The culture teaches in ways large and small, overtly and covertly, that those who are “believers,” i.e., religious folk, need “faith” and thus can’t be objective about things. Those who are “non-believers” it is assumed don’t need “faith,” and thus can be objective about things. To put it in technical terms, that’s a bunch of hooey!
The question on a level cultural playing field isn’t who has faith and who doesn’t, but who has the best justification for the faith that they have. Christians so easily buy into the notion that we’re the ones who must defend our beliefs, while the atheist, agnostic, or apathetic (the “triple A’s”) don’t have anything to defend—they do. As I’ve taught my children, if you learn how to skillfully ask questions, you’ll find that most of the triple A’s have no idea why they believe what they believe, or even what they believe. You’ll find that they can’t reason themselves out of a box, and yet they demand faultless evidence and logic from Christians, and when we provide it, they deny what it plainly says.
The implication of this double standard is that it allows people to move from one faith, Christianity, to another, all the while deluding themselves that they are moving from religion to non-religion. Technically they may not be “religious” in that they don’t go to church, but they still have a worldview based on faith commitments. The young lady, Lindsay, who inspired me to write the book is a great example. Leaving Christianity for agnosticism doesn’t means she left religion, or “faith” for some view of reality that doesn’t require faith. Every view of reality requires faith.
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