Some light reading material

Recently I got into a debate regarding evolution. Being a poor impromptu debater, I didn't get a change to establish my position or even make any kind of effective rebuttals, but I did immediately start researching so that I could at least mentally formulate my own position in terms that would make sense to any other person. What better way to compose all this, I thought, than in the form of a blog, which I have neglected for three months now?

I'll start out by making my first claim, which is that evolution is an atheistic construct and is in fact driven by the idea that there is no God. Evolution is an idea that seeks to explain the existence of life on Earth, and by association the entire universe itself, in the absence of a god, and in fact can only work in such absense. Of course, in order to find a congruence between science and religion, the idea of "theistic evolution" was created. I will discuss the merits of this idea at a later time, but for now I will say that it is a compromise between true belief in God and atheistic science. And, as Revelation 3:15-16 says, "(15) I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. (16) So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth." Of course, I daresay it does me little good to quote the Bible if people already don't accept the complete truth of it. Again, that's something I will get to later. For now, based on my claim that evolution is entirely dependent on the non-existence of God, I will here establish that God must exist.

Having had time to review the following video and analyze its contents, I will now use its discussion as a basis for my argument. The video can be found here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0khsot_hNWs&mode=related&search=

I have also created a transcript of the video, because Mr. Powell does speak very quickly and it can be hard to absorb everything he says. Otherwise, you can skip the smaller text section and continue on. So:

25 years ago I was a committed atheist, but as I tried to reconcile that world view with my experience and rationality, I came to see that atheism could not possibly be true and in fact is a question-begging fallacy. If reason is to have any force at all it cannot bet a set of conventions or culturally agreed upon rules of thought, because they would simply be arbitrary and therefore could not be imperative. There could be no laws of logic. And if reason was simply a platonic form, a "piece of furniture of the universe," then it could not impose its rules onto thinking beings. Only a person exercising their will, a powerful person, could do such a thing. For reason to be intelligible, it must find its source in a transcendent, personal, perfectly-ordered, non-contingent being who has revealed himself to us. If reason cannot be accounted for by a source outside of itself, then you end up trying to ground reason by using reason, and that is a logical fallacy, begging the question.

In addition, notions such as right, wrong, good, bad etc. have no real meaning or oughtness if they are conventions or societal norms. They too must find their source in a transcendent, personal, non-contingent, Omni benevolent being, and again the same is true regarding universals. Without a God in which all ideas are grounded, all we can speak of are particulars, individual things that bear no relation to one another despite the appearance to the contrary. And with only particulars, there can be no language or communication whatsoever, since language is predicated on the existence of universals, on categories.

One of the most common claims of the blasphemy challenge videos so far is the examination of how the world is, and that it shows there is no God. To do this, however, is to use inductive reasoning. Induction looks at the particulars and extrapolates that this is how the world is without exception. The problem with using induction is that in an atheistic world view it is fallacious. Just because something is true in a given instance does not prove it is that way in every instance. for an atheist to make a claim of how the universe is would require exhaustive knowledge of the universe in all its stages of development, and no one can claim such a thing and be taken seriously. For induction to work requires that nature is uniform and that there are patterns of causation, but that uniformity must be accounted for in some way. And again, that way can only be in a cause outside of the universe that is acting in it by establishing the laws that govern these patterns and provide uniformity.

Finally, there is the problem of the atheistic mind. If there is no soul, then the mind is simply a property of the brain. No brain, no mind. If this is true, then we're just physical entities, flesh machines, and if this is true, then we are entirely determined by chemical and biological processes, meaning there is no such thing as free will, and therefore no one can be truly held responsible for anything they do. After all, we would just be doing what we're programmed to do, such as believing in God or being an atheist. That would mean there would be nothing wrong with rape, murder, theft, lying, etc. and of course there could be no such thing as wrong in the first place. In the end, every tool an atheist uses can only be accounted for by the God of the Bible, a transcendent, non-contingent, personal being who imposes his image on us so that we can use our minds to make free moral choices, think rationally, employ induction, and use language. As a Christian I challenge all atheists to stop borrowing all their tools from the God of the bible and make your case without using logic, universals, induction, morality, or your minds. When you can do that, I’ll take your claims seriously. Until then, every protest you make only proves what you're trying to deny. I’m Doug Powell, and I am proud to fail the blasphemy challenge.

Now, I've never been an atheist and as such have never felt the necessity to reconcile my world view, but I find Mr. Powell makes some intriguing points. His arguments and examination are fairly brief, but after careful thought I have concluded that every point he makes is legitimate, and beyond that can be expanded to a point beyond doubt.

First, Mr. Powell makes his argument about reason. After considering the existence of reason in the absence of God, I came to some conclusions. First, if reason were to be a "piece of furniture of the universe," it would be as all other laws of the universe are, such as gravity; that is, unyielding. In the event that reason were capable of imposing itself upon us, it would necessarily impose itself in every circumstance, without exception. In other words, we as humans would never have unreasonable thoughts or make irrational choices. We would behave as computers do: incapable of deviating from or arguing with programming. And of course, even if this weren't the case, then we would still have the problem of reason being the arbitrary construct of society. And, since any one human cannot impose his will upon any other human, or society upon any one human, such societal constructs would be absolutely meaningless. Looking back at computers again, we humans are incapable of creating computers that do anything other than follow the laws of logic. We cannot impose our personalities, our images if you will, upon computers. In short, we can't create life from non-life (this idea also extends far beyond the realm of computers, but even so humans have yet to create a living organism where life did not already previously exist). All this means that, simply based on our observations of how we behave and what we are capable of accomplishing, a person must create reason, impose it, and allow it to be disregarded. That person must be powerful in order to impose the laws, perfect in order to make them flawless and non-arbitrary, and beyond humanity in order not to be subject to those laws (otherwise they would not be laws, such person would not be powerful enough to impose them on others, and they would be arbitrary). And of course, as Mr. Powell states, reason cannot be used to justify itself, as this is (within the very confines of reason itself) a logical fallacy. So should we discard the logical fallacy of reason's self justification, we have abolished a part of reason and thus made every other part meaningless. Otherwise, we can only admit that reason's existence is based on some external will, and as discussed this could only be possible through God.

Of course, it has been argued that God's imposition of reason upon us is itself arbitrary. This arguments fails to take into account, though, that arbitrariness is simply a lack of reason, which is a result of reason itself. God, not being subject to reason, is also incapable of being arbitrary, since His every act would automatically be in accordance with his own established laws of reason. One specific argument gave the following example:

Don't touch that!
Don't touch that! You'll burn yourself!
Which one is arbitrary and which one is reasoned?

Answer: they are both reasoned, and they are both arbitrary. The explanation of a reasoned statement need not be given for a statement to be reasonable. On the other hand, the imperative statements indicate that one person is trying to impose their reasoned conclusions upon another person, and this is arbitrary. So, this is clearly a silly example of a silly notion.

Next, let us take a gander at universals and particulars. Mr. Powell briefly mentions (in context with his reason argument) right and wrong. What exactly are "right" and "wrong?" Well, in an atheistic world, they are once again arbitrary constructs attempting to impose the will of an individual or individuals upon any one or any group of other individuals; or more concisely, nothing. By this view, right and wrong are simply derivations of reason, which (not to beat a dead horse) is meaningless in this instance. God is therefore necessary for right and wrong to have substance. Right and wrong are not only under the umbrella of reason, but also universals, determined by God, which can then also be confirmed by derivation from reason, also determined by God. Hence, right and wrong are in accordance with reason. But again, right and wrong are also universals. That is, certain actions, thoughts, etc. that are considered right have the property of "rightness," and things considered wrong have "wrongness." In fact, all universals must necessarily stem from God. Mr. Powell mentions this, but doesn't elaborate very much. I, however, have taken this heavily into account, and have made the same conclusion.

What are universals? A universal is something that can exist in multiple places at any given time. How can this be, if no matter can occupy two places at one time, or if two pieces of matter cannot occupy the same space at one time? That would seem to be a quandary, except that universals are not physical entities, but rather the observed properties of particulars, which are themselves the physical entities. Interestingly, because universals are observed properties, they must stem from reason. Without reason, how can a human observe two different particulars and note the similarities between them? The notion that two particulars share common properties is a conclusion based on observation, and a conclusion is...a function of reason!

Well, this doesn't take into account the possibility (however absurd it may be) that universals in fact do not exist. Conveniently, in the absence of universals the above arguments make no sense. However, universals must exist. If they did not, we would have a collection of particulars with similar (and often even exactly similar) traits that, despite their remarkable resemblance to other particulars, are completely different entities. Well, this notion is easily shot down. In the case of no universals, what is a human? What is reason itself, if every thought would be a particular with no relation to any other thought? Even simpler still, if we have a collection of particulars, each one is different from the other. However, if we select one of those particulars, which is completely unique, we could correctly say that every other particular in existence has the property of being completely different from our selected particular. Thus, we have a universal.

So universals must exist. All universals must come from God, because all universals can only be acknowledged through reason. Because God is responsible for universals, without God there could be no universals, and since we can logically conclude that this is impossible, the only answer must be the existence of God.

Naturally, language must come into play as well. Language, communication, and even any kind of concrete thought can only exist if there are universals on which to base it. Anisthenes said to Plato, "I can see the horse, Plato, but not the horseness." In communicating to Plato that he observed a horse, he employed a universal. Otherwise, he would have had to say something like "I can see the thing" rather than "I can see the horse." In fact, that universals are necessary for language and communication is demonstrated by different language. A person speaking English cannot understand a person speaking French because different universals govern sentence structure, pronunciation, and vocabulary in these two languages. However, because of universals, common observable properties, an English speaker can learn French and vice versa, and they will be able to understand each other, because universals govern the analogies between words and grammatical structures in the different languages (for instance, "frog" and "grenouille" are the same concept, hence they share a cognitive universal). And since we can conclude that universals cannot exist without God, we can conclude that there would also be no ability to communicate. If I pointed to a tree (which would be a nameless particular), any other person would not understand the tree as being a tree, and could never have my understanding of the tree aside from their own perception. Even nonverbal communication or mutual understanding would be impossible, because every particular would be different, and subject to the interpretation of each person.

Mr. Powell next argues the point of inductive reasoning, which itself is a sub-branch of reason. In an atheistic universe, as Mr. Powell says, there would be no uniformity and no "cause" for anything (ultimately, the universe itself would either have to be an uncaused phenomenon, such as in the Big Bang model, or simply always present). As such, existence would be entirely random, and even the governing laws of the universe themselves would be subject to random change. Therefore, it would be impossible based on the observation of a snapshot of the universe to determine exactly "how" it is. Science itself would fall apart, as even testable experimental results would be uncertain unless God, from outside of the universe, dictated the laws that would operate within and govern that universe.

Humans have a property which no other animal has, and which is scientifically immeasurable: a soul. To deny the existence of a soul would be to say that our personalities, our conscience, our ability to reject reason and act irrationally, and every other thought we think or action we perform is determined entirely by chemical and/or reactions, deficiencies, or necessities. This makes us nothing more than computers (albeit complexly programmed ones) that have no personal control over what we do, and thus have no real free will. Even supposed conscious choices would simply be learned responses to prior experience. We would be driven by our own bodies and brains, having no true identity to set us apart from other humans. Most importantly, we would have no responsibility for our own actions, as they would result from our programming. There would be know right and wrong (such concepts would be beyond comprehension), and no ability to imaginatively create a God to explain the world, because there would be no reason for us to be programmed to do so and no experience that would ever cause us to "learn" about God. In short, our souls are the result of the imprint of God upon us, which give us all the abilities that set us apart from every other organism.

So I have determined for myself, through thorough analysis, thought, and conclusion-making that God must exist, and must have exactly the properties He claims to possess: perfection, omnipotence, and governance over the universe, as well as an infinite, unceasing, and incorruptible interest in human beings (that is, love or "omni-benevolence"). The next further step I will take (not tonight) will be to use that as a basis to determine the merit of the Bible, and then establish the scientific accuracy of the Bible.

I'll just leave this off with Romans 1:18-32, which is incredible considering the society in which we presently live:

(18)For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
(19)because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
(20)For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
(21)For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.(22)Professing to be wise, they became fools,
(23)and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
(24)Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
(25)For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
(26)For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
(27)and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
(28)And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
(29)being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips,
(30)slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
(31)without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;
(32)and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Sound familiar?