The existence of God is as certain as the fact that our scientific inferences are well-grounded, since it is God Himself Who grounds them. My certainty about God’s existence is roughly on a par with my certainty that an apple thrown up in the air will fall back to Earth in a lawlike fashion, and not fly off into space or zoom around the room.The god he's certain about is,
Someone (beyond space and time) Whose nature it is to know and love in a perfect and unlimited way, Whose mode of acting is simply to know, love and choose (without anything more basic underlying these acts), Who is the Creator and Conserver of the natural world, and Who is therefore capable of making anything He wishes to, provided that it’s consistent with His nature as a perfectly intelligent and loving being, and with His other choices.[Actually, Torley is being disingenuous here and won't honestly admit it, since by extension he's also certain his evangelical trinitarian, incarnational, redeeming god exists, who is supposedly based in the pages of an inspired Bible, but I'll let that slide. If he's not certain of this, then what degree of probability would he say these additional beliefs of his warrant?] Now if Torley is a rational person unaffected by the irrationalities of faith, then he can be brought to his senses with just two facts. If not, then he cannot be helped, just like a heavily indoctrinated Moonie, or Mormon, or Muslim cannot be helped.
Hume’s argument continues to perplex both philosophers and scientists. There’s still no consensus about whether Hume is right. Some believe that we have no choice but to embrace Hume’s sceptical conclusion about the unobserved. Others believe that the conclusion is clearly absurd. But then the onus is on these defenders of “common sense” to show precisely what is wrong with Hume’s argument. No one has yet succeeded in doing this (or at least no one has succeeded in convincing a majority of philosophers that they have done so). LINK (see his conclusion).
Law concludes that no one has succeeded so far, which includes Vincent Torley's god hypothesis. Law refuses to pretend to know things he doesn't know, which I find admirable. However, we shouldn't forget that Hume lived in an era where philosophers were looking for certainty, following in the footsteps of Descartes. Hume brought the quest for certainty to an end though, showing that if we seek after certainty we cannot observe cause and effect, or that we have a self either (as opposed to a bundle of sensations). This is the difference that makes all the difference. The quest for a certain foundation for knowledge is, or should be, dead. But because of the lack of certainty Torley erroneously inserts his unevidenced mysterious miracle god-hypothesis into the equation.In an article on his Website, Debunking Christianity, the well-known skeptic and former preacher John Loftus, M.A., M.Div., author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, defends the possibility of scientific knowledge along the following lines:"There are several things wrong with this argument," Torley writes.
“If there is no God then we don’t know anything.” False. If so, chimps don’t know anything either. They don’t know how to get food, or mate or even where to live. Without knowing anything they should’ve died off a long time ago. And yet here they are. They don’t need a god to know these things. Why do we need a god for knowledge? We learn through a process of trial and error. Since we’ve survived as a human species, we have acquired reliable knowledge about our world. Period.
The same reason a parent is obliged to help her children, even when they reject her. Parents bring their children into the world. According to this person's world view, God brought humans (and animals, and plants) into the world. Human parents have this very obligation toward their children--to keep helping them, even when they reject you. And by and large, parents do this. So--is God actually *less* moral, dutiful, strong and self-controlled than your average mother? LINK. Dr. Hafer is the author of the incredibly good book, The Not-So-Intelligent Designer.]"I don't buy the argument, because the analogy is a flawed one," says Torley. Well, now, if this doesn't prove there are too many ways to play the game called Christian apologist, I don't know of them. Whatever the problem is, answer it by saying whatever needs to be said to save one's faith from refutation.
Vincent Torley: Hi John, if you really believe that sophisticated theology no longer deserves to be taken seriously, then you should be able to take on its ablest exponents in a debate and wipe the floor with them. Are you confident that if you were to publicly debate someone like Ed Feser before a live audience and an impartial panel of adjudicators, you would win?I guess one person's sophisticated theologian is another's "wimpy theist", eh? I wonder what Randal Rauser thinks of Edward Feser's sophisticated theology? Sophisticated atheologian Keith Parsons would agree with Torley that Edward Feser is someone to be taken seriously. Does Rauser? Curious minds want to know.
JWL: Hi Vincent, why the emphasis on debates? I doubt I could effectively debate a Scientologist or a Mormon, or a Muslim. So? That just means someone is better at debating sophisticated theology. That does not say anything else.
VT: OK, then. What about a written debate - say, a book where you and some philosopher like Feser can argue it out? My point is that if there isn't some kind of ideal argumentative format in which you can present your case, take on all comers and win, then why should I (or anyone else) believe you're right?
JWL: Vincent, I already co-wrote such a book.
VT: You did indeed, John. The problem was that your opponent, Randal Rauser, is a trained theologian and Christian apologist, but not a philosopher - and it showed. As one reviewer of your book politely put it: "Rauser is perhaps not the best (or at least, not the more forceful) advocate for the Christian position that could have been featured." I also watched some of the online debate between you and Rauser on God's existence, via the link you presented. The opening statements were vigorously argued, but there were no 10-minute rebuttals on both sides, so there was no good follow-up. Instead, a third guy, a self-styled anti-apologist, interposed himself between you both, which upset the flow of the debate. It was a lost opportunity. I wish there had been a more lively free-for-all at the end. Anyway, you really need to debate a proper Christian philosopher - and not a wimpy theist who thinks belief in God is "properly basic," but someone who's prepared to defend classical theism (and Christianity) on rational grounds. LINK.
It is not often that I encounter a book which forces me to undergo a fundamental rethink on a vital issue. Michael Alter’s The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry is one such book. The issue it addresses is whether the New Testament provides good evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. Prior to reading Michael Alter’s book, I believed that a Christian could make a strong case for Jesus’ having been raised from the dead, on purely historical grounds. After reading the book, I would no longer espouse this view. Alter has convincingly demolished Christian apologists’ case for the Resurrection – and he’s got another book coming out soon, which is even more hard-hitting than his first one, judging from the excerpts which I’ve read.If you think that's stunning you won't believe what Torley says next, about the minimal facts and the maximal data approaches to defending the resurrection:
Diehard skeptics will of course dismiss the Resurrection as fiction because they reject the very idea of the supernatural, but Michael Alter, a Jewish author who has spent more than a decade researching the Resurrection, isn’t one of these skeptics. Alter willingly grants for the sake of argument the existence of a personal God Who works miracles and Who has revealed Himself in the Hebrew Bible. Despite these generous concessions to his Christian opponents, I have to say that Alter’s book is the most devastating critique of the case for the Resurrection that I have ever read....reading Alter’s book will make you realize that what historians know about Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and post-mortem appearances to his disciples is very little: far too little for a Christian to base their belief in the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection on the historical evidence alone. I now believe that only the grace of God could possibly justify making such an intellectual commitment.
A revolution, it seems, is afoot. Scientists are finally coming out and declaring that they can live with the supernatural, after all. What will we see next? Open discussion of the flaws in Darwinian evolution?The "heads I win tails you lose" trick is obvious. If we say science is closed to the supernatural the apologist will say we are uninterested in the truth. If we say instead it is theoretically possible to detect the supernatural then he can say we should be open to a discussion of the flaws of Darwinian evolution. So when he finds apparent divergent views between us he can say both, pitting us against each other. So let me respond.
I propose to distinguish between two kinds of skepticism: Type A and Type B. Type A skepticism casts doubt on people’s claims to have had an extraordinary experience, while Type B skepticism questions whether a miraculous explanation of this extraordinary experience is the best one. In the case of the Resurrection, Type A skepticism seeks to undermine one or more of the key facts...whereas Type B skepticism doesn’t question the key facts, but looks for a non-miraculous explanation of those key facts.He's also laudably trying to think in terms of the probabilities.
There's a famous passage in Hume's Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1777) where he writes:The Indian prince, who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost, reasoned justly; and it naturally required very strong testimony to engage his assent to facts, that arose from a state of nature, with which he was unacquainted, and which bore so little analogy to those events, of which he had had constant and uniform experience. (Section X, Part I.)Hume was willing to "bite the bullet" and acknowledge that people following his epistemic principles would sometimes reject as absurd things that later turned out to be genuine - nevertheless, he insisted, they "reasoned justly." Perhaps John is willing to "bite the bullet," or perhaps he wishes to reconsider his views. But what he has done, albeit inadvertently, is show that Humean skepticism, when taken to its logical conclusion (for that's where John's epistemology is derived from) leads to a reductio ad absurdum. And for that, I thank him: he has rendered a service to philosophy. Cheers.
Jesus' resurrection is attested in St. Paul and all of the Gospels. The episode which John Loftus wrote about in his OP [regarding the devastating problems with the Zombies story told in Matthew 27:51-54] is related in just one Gospel, in a passage which may not be original, anyway. Hence my skepticism. However, if it were recorded in Luke as well as Matthew, then I would have no trouble in believing it. LINK.Given the problems I highlighted in my OP, what else can Torley mean but that "the Bible Says So. I Believe it. That Settles it"? So Torley, let's say for the sake of argument this Zombie text was recorded in Luke as well as Matthew. Then answer the problems I mentioned in my OP.
Dr. Vincent Torley reviewed it and said:
It seemed to me that Loftus was questioning premise P5 of Akin’s argument (that the New Testament is inspired by God), but unfortunately, he did not explicitly say so, preferring to focus on his own argument against the Virgin Birth, which I have to say was very well-presented. Loftus made a powerfully convincing case that miracle claims should rest on solid evidence, and that belief in the Virgin Birth does not. Loftus highlighted the numerous historical problems Matthew’s and Luke’s historical narratives succinctly and cogently. The Skeptical Zone.
Here's an excellent debunking of what Jimmy Akins said. Thanks go out to Dr. Aaron Adair and the Godless Engineer for this! Adair and GE claim that I did very well!
The divine authority of Scripture seems to me not something that one could really establish at all. Some of us came to believe it at our parents’ knee. (But then, how’d they come to know it?) To accept the authority of Scripture on the authority of my parents will work all right as an explanation of why I do believe it, but hardly works as a justification of the belief itself (why I should believe it). My own view is that no amount of historical scholarship can establish the inspiration and authority of scripture.He asks,
what sort of evidence could there be about God inspiring the Gospel writers (say) or the selection of the Canon that would underwrite belief in those?...My suspicion is that Plantinga is right: our warrant in believing the Bible to be the authoritative Word of God owes to the work of the Holy Spirit. Full stop, pretty much. [Note 15, page 370, in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael J. Murray.]Later Cover admits the evidence can't even convince a non-Christian theist, saying: “We oughtn’t expect too much from an apologetic of miracles: there’s no forcing a theist to be a Christian.” [Ibid., Note 16, page 374].
I believed that a Christian could make a strong case for Jesus’ having been raised from the dead, on purely historical grounds...I would no longer espouse this view....Whether one chooses to continue believing it (as I do) or not, one is forced to accept... that belief in the Resurrection cannot be built on the foundation of historical data, for it is a foundation of sand. LINKIs it any wonder why the rest of us think these people are nuts! [Sorry, no I'm not!]