Part 2: Knowledge, Belief, and Logic
This is Part 2 of Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Guide.
4. Epistemology and How Belief Works
4.1. Evidence is not believing
Modern atheists and agnostics (people undecided on the matter) wield the terms "evidence" and "science" to present reasonable-sounding objections like:
- "I don't see evidence that God exists"
- "I don't see evidence that the universe was created."
But if you think carefully, behind these objections are a lot of assumptions about what God would do and how He would do it.
Interpreting Evidence for God vs. Ignoring It
Atheists and agnostics claim there's no evidence for God, but there is plenty of evidence for God, they just say it doesn't count. They they dismiss it as not good enough, insufficient. They don't believe in God because He hasn't shown Himself to them in the way they think He should. They say there are better alternative explanations, and even if those alternative, naturalistic explanations lack sufficient evidence, they still prefer those explanations and give them more weight than the possibility of God.
The issue then is not lack of evidence, but how we interpret it. Evidence can always be explained away. No matter how you slice it, all arguments against God (and, by extension, origins and Christianity as a whole) come down to the objection: "If God were real, He would have done things differently. And because He didn't, I don't believe."
4.2. Criteria for belief
People are convinced of different propositions for different reasons. What convinced you may not convince others. There is no such thing as a knock-down, drag-out argument that will convince everyone.
This is true for any claim, not just those of Christianity. We see this all the time in high profile cases where someone famous is accused of a crime. Everyone sees the same evidence, but some weigh certain pieces of evidence more heavily than others. In fact, in many of these cases, people are convinced of someone's guilt or innocence based on superficial things such as the way the accused looks, dresses, or carries himself. Belief, then, doesn't depend just on having some evidence, but on having enough evidence to overcome other barriers to belief.
Apologetics is about removing barriers to belief, so we need to identify the barriers and remove them. Removing such barriers typically requires additional evidence against the barriers themselves. So the job of apologetics is not just to provide evidence for Christianity, but to provide evidence against the things that get in the way of belief. In short, apologetics involves providing a mountain of evidence.
Properly basic beliefs
There are some beliefs we all (mostly) have in common, such as we live on earth, breathe air, eat, exist, etc. These beliefs are not the result of argument. They just seem right, make sense, and are obvious. These are called properly basic beliefs.
Many properly basic beliefs come about as we learn new information. When you learn that 2+2=4, a lightbulb goes on and you just see how it's true. You don't necessarily have to be argued into it.
Other beliefs we may form a bit later, such as a belief in God, or in Creation over common descent. Some people look around and see that these things are obvious. Others don't. So what's properly basic for one person isn't for another. Some children think and talk about and seem to understand God at a young age, whereas others don't seem to gain this understanding until they get older.
Beliefs based on authority and evidence, which are often the same thing
Yet other beliefs we form based on authority. If raised in a Christian home, you may come to believe in the resurrection of Jesus based on the teachings of parents and church. People refer to this as "taking it on faith," believing based on trust, but not being able to explain why otherwise. This can come up when a Christian child challenges another person's beliefs, then the other person asks the child why they believe what they believe, and the child has no answer other than, "I take it on faith". (The technical term for believing based solely on faith is called fideism.)
Beliefs may also form based on evidence. You may come to believe in the Resurrection based on historical evidence. Evidence and authority are often tied together. We learn of evidence from a person, and we find the person trustworthy and the evidence convincing. For example, we learn of Pontius Pilate via historical writings (the Bible, Josephus, etc.), and our belief in him as a real figure is reinforced by archaeological evidence (which we may see firsthand or read about in a book). None of us have ever met Pilate, and most of us have never personally seen an ancient artifact with his name on it, but our belief that he was a real person is based on an authority telling us about the evidence for him.
Hence, it's a mistake to fall into the trap of believing that evidence and authority are at odds. In practice, most evidence is really the interpretation of an authority. Take, for example, people who believe in evolution and an old earth. They claim to believe based on evidence, but this is actually not the case. How many old-earthers have actually...
- viewed fossil strata firsthand?
- conducted radiometric dating?
- created calibration curves?
- carefully weighed neutral evolution against natural selection?
- studied population genetics?
...and so on. Even most biologists haven't done all of these things!
The evidence you receive is filtered through an authority who colors it with their interpretation. (Incidentally, this is a point many opponents of Christianity use against the Bible, claiming it's been tainted over the years--a claim that has been proven to be false.) This means that even if you have evidence that contradicts an authority's interpretation, that authority might twist the evidence to fit their own interpretation if they're dishonest. Thus, it's best to observe and analyze the evidence for yourself if at all possible. Taking "expert" opinion at face value without verifying it for yourself is a mistake.
Whether a person believes in Christianity comes down to basic beliefs, interpersonal trust, philosophy, seeking out and interpreting evidence for oneself, and choice. This is hard work, and no one can do it for you. It's easier to just pick a favorite authority and believe what they say without doing your own research. Unfortunately, this is the easy path many people take.
We have to also consider this: If Christianity is true, then we all have a sinful nature that can get in the way of believing something that's true. Hence, failure to believe may not be due to lack of evidence or trust, but rather a willful refusal. Our sinful nature leads us to lie to ourselves.
4.3. Establishing final authority
Apologetics comes down to establishing a final authority, and all claims of final authority are to some degree circular.
Who is the ultimate authority over students in a classroom? The teacher has authority, but he gets his authority from someone else, perhaps the headmaster of the school. But where does the headmaster get his authority? Maybe he was appointed by a board of trustees. Okay, where did they get their authority? Probably the parents of the students. But where did the parents get their authority Eventually, this line will end at one person. And that person is the ultimate authority. Why? The only logical answer is "because they said so," for if that person appeals to a higher authority, then they're not really the highest.
Consider two competing theories about the origin of life. One theory is that God created living things. Call this creationism or intelligent design. The other theory, naturalism, is that life arose through unknown natural processes. In creationism, God is the ultimate authority. Why? Because He's the creator, and He says so. That's a circular argument, but it's valid because there is no other option. If God is eternal, and He created all things, He's the final authority.
It's worth noting here that the root word of "authority" is "author" which means "father" or "creator." By virtue of being the creator, one is de facto the authority over the creation.
Now consider the naturalistic theory. Who's the ultimate authority here? There are only two options. The first option is that nature was created, and the creator is the final authority. The second option is that nature is eternal, and thus must be the ultimate authority.
This is where it gets interesting, because people who consider themselves naturalists will actually make contradicting claims that seem to support both options. But if you really press them, most naturalists will favor some variation of nature (i.e. matter and energy) being eternal. I'll get into the details of that in a moment, but let's first consider the implications of having nature as the final authority.
The Problem of Final Authority in Naturalism
Nature is impersonal, so it doesn't actually speak or make claims like a personal being does. Nor can anything in nature be the ultimate authority, for how does one atom have "authority" over another? Even if we concede that nature is the final authority, such a concession is meaningless and useless.
Some naturalists are perfectly content with there being no practical, final authority, because it allows them to arbitrarily select their own preferred candidate. Some proponents of naturalism like the idea of having an expert class be the final authority, particularly in matters of science. And why should they be the final authority? Well, because they said so. This is arbitrary, and the naturalist can't justify it. This fact is a point of embarrassment, and you'll see them try to work around it by saying that their choice of authority is based on "reason" or "science" or "empirical data" or something of the sort. But this is all smoke and mirrors, because naturalism can't justify any of those things. You can't prove, in a purely naturalistic view, that reason, science, or empiricism are valid. You can't even prove uniformity of nature, which is what science is based on.
The Flaw of Uniformitarianism in Science
If you don't believe me, try this exercise. If you mix baking soda and vinegar right now, you get a reaction. How do you know that if you mix them together tomorrow, you'll get a reaction? The reflexive response for most will be that "it has always worked that way in the past, so we have no reason to think it won't work that way in the future." But this is a circular claim. Just because things were repeatable in the past doesn't mean they'll be repeatable in the future. And if you assume that, you're assuming the thing you're trying to prove!
If that's confusing, let's break it down some more. You want to prove that the experiment you did today (baking soda and vinegar) will work at any point in the future. To prove this, you cite past examples. But the problem is that those examples are in the past, so all you've shown is that there was a repeatable pattern in the past. But you still have not shown that such a pattern will hold into the future. Remember, you're trying to prove that the experiment will work tomorrow, not just that it worked in the past. How can you possibly prove this beforehand? The only way is to appeal to some evidence that the universe is governed by some power that guarantees today's chemical reactions will work the same way tomorrow. But in the naturalistic view, there is no such overarching power to appeal to. The naturalist just has to "take it on faith" that our very limited past observations of the universe paint an accurate and predictable picture of the future.
Complicating matters even more for the naturalist is that the idea that the universe as we see it today was not always the way it is. Planets and stars formed, living things came into existence, temperatures changed, etc. This undercuts the naturalist's argument for uniformitarianism.
Getting back to the discussion on authority: In naturalism, making claims of final authority is a free-for-all. The expert class can claim to be the final authority, but they can't justify this any more than could a talking parrot who claims to be the final authority. In naturalism, there is no inherent hierarchy of authority, only an infinite regress into the past.
Naturalists will try to solve this problem by referring to some kind of quasi-origin event, like the "big bang." But since the "big bang" idea posits that the singularity (or its source) is eternal, you essentially wind up at the belief that the universe as a whole is eternal. This tension is easily seen with naturalistic models that attempt to explain the origin of matter and energy by appealing to pre-existing matter and energy. "Quantum" is a word that gets invoked almost as a magic spell to explain matter and energy, but the problem is that "quantum" anything assumes existing matter or energy.
The bottom line: In naturalism, there's no single, final authority. There's just stuff.
4.4. What is knowledge?
When practicing apologetics, we have to start at a common ground. Christians will not agree with non-Christians on issues of final authority. But usually we can find common ground and a good starting point by settling on a definition of knowledge.
What is knowledge? Plato said it's justified true belief. According to Plato, what is justified is that which we can perceive with our senses or reason.
But is this right? If I remember having corn flakes for breakfast last Monday, my senses and reason don't tell me that. I'm relying solely on my memory, which ostensibly contains a recollection of what my senses perceived in the past. But can I really know I had corn flakes? Put another way, how can I know that my memory is always accurate? We all know that memory is not always completely accurate.
Once again, the naturalist is in a pickle. He has no justification to believe that his senses or his memory is reliable, for the same reasons that he has no justification to believe in uniformitarianism. He just "takes it on faith" that his senses are good enough.
On the other hand, the Christian who believes the universe and our senses and minds were created by God, does have a rational justification for believing our senses. If the universe is orderly and governed by laws, and God created our senses, even though they might be wrong sometimes, we can be assured that overall, they function well enough to let us paint a mostly accurate picture of our experiences.
Combining Evidence to Establish Truth
What we really care about is whether our senses and memories are accurate when it comes to important things. And there is nothing more important and weighty than life itself. In Deuteronomy 17:6 The Bible offers the following prescription for establishing knowledge one way or the other:
Our senses can be somewhat unreliable, but overall work well enough to function. Reason allows us to take sensory input and apply logic to reach conclusions. By combining the evidence of multiple witnesses—people, physical evidence, and reason—we can indeed have true knowledge of some things. We can't know everything, but we can know some things with certainty.
Although the naturalist doesn't have a rational justification for trusting his senses, it's beneficial that he does, because it gives us some common ground on which to start. Note that common ground is not the same as neutral ground, because there is no such thing. In reality, the naturalist, by trusting his senses, essentially concedes a very important point to the Christian apologist.
4.5. Reason and no sense
Reason gives us evidence of things that our senses cannot detect. Have you ever been dreaming, and in your dream you were fully aware that you were in a dream? None of your five senses told you you were dreaming. Yet you were able to reason that what was going on in your mind was not real.
Now here's a brain teaser. Let's say you tell someone else about your dream, and they insist, "No, you were not dreaming. What you heard and saw was real. It was not a dream." After giving them the side eye for a moment, how would you answer?
"I know I was dreaming! It seemed like a dream, the things that happened in it wouldn't happen in real life. I woke up shortly after, I was in my bed, and the dream was over."
Your opponent isn't satisfied and retorts, "Sorry, that's not good enough. You have to give me empirical evidence that you were not dreaming." What would you say? You simply can't provide empirical evidence for an experience that only you had. Is your opponent reasonable to doubt you? Of course not.
This is how skepticism makes knowledge impossible. With enough thought you can talk yourself into doubting anything. Look around you. Are you really where you think you are? You could be dreaming or in a simulation. There's no way to tell that you're not. Maybe your senses are lying to you. What makes the belief "this is real" more rational than the belief "this is a simulation or a dream?"
Innate Knowledge and Basic Beliefs
It comes down to your basic beliefs. We are wired to believe certain things. Babies are wired to trust their senses. Some of their perceptions don't seem to make sense to us, such as fear of a cereal bar with a certain pattern. Incidentally, there's a popular but unproven theory that babies' senses are all mixed up. For example, they can see sounds or hear what they see, or so the theory goes. If true, then relying purely on the five senses could lead a baby to develop very wrong beliefs about the world early on. What we see is the opposite. Babies have innate knowledge of physics and mathematics.
Again, the naturalist can admit that we are born with some knowledge about the world. But they can't rationally justify it on their own worldview. There's no rational reason to think that naturalistic processes imparted humans with the knowledge about both the material (physics) and the non-material (math). But naturalists "take it on faith."
The Christian, on the other hand, doesn't have to take it on faith. The Christian has a rational justification for believing that the knowledge about the world that we're born with is reliable, i.e., that we were created by God and He gave us our instincts, senses, and innate knowledge (see Romans 2:15).
4.6. Human reason is not the final arbiter of truth
If naturalism is true, then human reason can possibly lead us to the truth about things key to survival, such as where the food is, how to avoid getting hurt, etc. However, it's just as possible that human reason could lead us to completely wrong but useful conclusions about the world. In fact, the idea of evolution (specifically neo-Darwinism, which is common descent via natural selection), specifically posits that organisms evolve in ways that are useful to reproduction. For example, having a working nose and eyes and tongue can help an animal determine whether a given fruit is edible. That's useful, but it doesn't necessarily lead to knowledge about the fruit.
Evolution vs. True Knowledge
Essentially, in evolution, organisms are just running algorithms: "If a substance triggers certain olfactory nerves and a gag reflex, do not eat. If substance triggers other olfactory nerves and causes salivation, eat." This is not a conscious process, and the animal doesn't know whether a food is good or bad, or even what food is or why it needs to eat. Nor does it need to. Humans, of course, have understanding of all these things, but how does that understanding arise from natural processes? And, more to the point, how can we know that this understanding is correct or even close to correct? If thoughts and understanding and knowledge are simply chemical processes, why would we assume they or reliable or mean anything at all?
To put it in a little more accessible way, you can operate out of habit without ever understanding why you have the habits you do, where they came from, or even whether they are good or bad. The theory of evolution holds that we just evolved what amount to habits that are useful to reproduction. If this is true (and it's not), why should we expect these habits to give rise to knowledge? After all, if we can get along fine with just innate habits, knowledge would just be another burden to keep up with. Natural selection would not select for the ability to understand and produce true knowledge unless it conferred some reproductive benefit.
Some would counter that having knowledge does confer many benefits. For example, understanding things that are invisible to the eye, such as viruses and bacteria, offers a huge advantage. If we understand that some bacteria are harmful and some are helpful, we can perhaps avoid the bad ones. This knowledge would certainly be useful information. But the problem is that natural selection doesn't operate on what's true. Something is useful to natural selection only inasmuch as it confers a reproductive benefit, regardless of whether it's true or false. It only operates on what's useful to reproduction. So while an understanding of pathology would be useful, there are countless other untrue, completely fictitious but plausible theories that would be equally useful and selectable. For instance, suppose people got the idea that what we know as bad bacteria are evil spirits, and what we know as good bacteria are good spirits, and that these spirits take the form of tiny, invisible things. This would result in the same beneficial behavior: avoiding the bad "evil spirits" (bacteria). Hence, natural selection could select for this "knowledge" just as well as it could something closer to reality.
The Christian Alternative: Special Revelation and the Fall
Now let's look at the alternative. If the Bible is true, then the human mind is fallen and corrupt, and therefore will sometimes be wrong. However, God's has given us special revelation which may protect and guide some of our reasoning in a way that we can still arrive at the correct conclusions. If God wants us to understand certain things, such as His revelation through the Bible, it seems He would protect our reason enough that we may interpret His revelation correctly. This is simple and straightforward, and avoids all of the problems of naturalism and evolution.
There is another thing we have to consider. If the Bible isn't true but some other god created us, then human reason may or may not be corrupt. If there was no fall as recorded in Genesis, and we were created with sound and intact reasoning abilities, we should be able to trust our reason. But if this is true, and we're all operating with the same basic reasoning and aren't corrupt, then there should be more widespread agreement among people. To put it differently, if nothing were broken, humanity wouldn't act and appear broken.
One of the key features separating Christianity from other religions is the Fall. In Christianity, Adam and Eve were given one rule not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Both disobeyed, which earned them a one-way trip out of the Garden of Even, and a significant change of affairs otherwise. They would have to work for their food, the gestation period would increase, and there would be strife among humans. Essentially, God did not force Adam and Eve to live in perfection, but gave them a choice to stay or leave, and they chose to leave.
Many non-Christian religions attribute the source of evil to a god (if they recognize one) or hold that evil isn't real. One of the more bizarre explanations of evil includes there being two warring gods. In the non-theistic religions that seem more compatible with naturalism (Buddhism namely), evil is dismissed as a sort of illusion or state of mind rather than an objectively real problem.
The existence of evil is the crux of the so-called "argument of evil" against theistic religions. The argument, as we've already discussed, is one form of the terminal objection, "Why did God do things the way He did?" Specifically, why did God prevent or eliminate evil instead of permitting it? The record of the Fall in the Garden of Eden makes it clear that God gave Adam and Eve a choice. He could have not given them a choice and avoided all possibility of them committing evil. He had the power to prevent evil by not giving them a choice, so we know that the existence of evil is not because God is powerless. Clearly, giving people the ability to choose between good and evil was better than forcing everyone to be robots.
This raises another question. If God gave Adam and Eve a choice, and God's creation was perfect, why would they choose evil? What we have to understand is that people are not machines or deterministic functions. If we view them as such, we'll think something along the lines of, "If a function is perfect, and you plug in input x, you'll get output y every time." And then we apply this reasoning to Adam and Eve and draw the conclusion that they must have been flawed in some way. We have to understand that God created man in His own image. The Scriptures even say to us "you are gods." Among all of the created things, Adam and Eve had the unique ability to be perfect and still choose not to be perfect. And this makes a lot of sense. If they had no choice but to be perfect and completely, 100% good, their goodness would be an illusion, since they couldn't choose otherwise. This is why we view animals as amoral. They don't have the capacity to choose good or evil. It's only by having the choice between good and evil that humans are even able to be good.
Does this mean goodness is dependent on evil? No, because goodness is part of God's eternal nature. Goodness has existed for all of eternity past in the Godhead without evil. Adam, of course, was a created being, and God gave him and Eve the ability to choose whether or not they would retain the perfect nature they were given, or cast it off.
As an aside, I've heard it said that if we were in the same position as Adam or Eve, we would have made the same choice. I don't think that's true. I think another person might have chosen differently.
4.7. Logic
The Law of Non-Contradiction
Logic is the foundation of all thought. And the law of non-contradiction is the foundational law of all logic. The law of non-contradiction goes like this: A proposition cannot be true and false at the same time and in the same sense. For example, "You're reading this book" cannot be true and false at the same time and in the same sense.
If contradictory statements can both be true, then logic doesn't even exist. Suppose I say, "People are either male or female. Bob is a person. Bob is not female. Therefore Bob is a male." Makes sense.
Well, if we throw out the law of non-contradiction, then the argument could look like this: "People are both male and female. Bob is and isn't a person. Bob is and is not a female. Therefore Bob is and is not a male." (Sorry Bob) Obviously, none of this makes any sense. And if the law of non-contradiction isn't true, then it also is true. And everything I said does and doesn't make sense.
Even mathematics breaks down if you throw out the law of non-contradiction. Any number can equal and not equal anything, so 2+2=4 is both true and false. Again, it makes no sense.
Contradictions in Eastern Religions and Relativism
Eastern religions are notorious for teaching contradictory things, and couch it with sayings like, "Truth is relative." But even those religions still hold the law of non-contradiction. By even saying, "Truth is relative," they're saying, "The saying, 'Truth is relative' is true." So they're still proposing an absolute truth that is the exception to their own rule. Not surprisingly, they end up contradicting themselves.
Previous: ← Part 1: Foundations Next: Part 3: Barriers and Objections to Belief →