Several years ago, I decided it was time for me to educate myself on the whole issue of evolution and creationism. The first book I read was Vital Dust by Christian de Duve. After reading that book, I came to the realization that before I could ever be qualified to have a strong opinion about evolution, I was going to have to know a lot more than I knew about biology. I gave up on it.
Since then, I have had this sneaking suspicion that there are a lot of people on both sides of the issue who have very strong opinions about it, but who really aren’t qualified to say, because they lack the necessary education to be able to assess the evidence.
I want to observe what seems to me to be an inconsistency among some non-believers. Some of them think Christians are irrational if they take things on authority. In other words, if Christians believe some things because some authority says so rather than because they examined the evidence for themselves, then some non-believers think the Christians are being irrational.
Among those non-believers, there are some who have very strong opinions about evolution, but they have no education in biology or archaeology. All they know is that the vast majority of the scientific community in the relevant field believes in evolution. It seems, then, that they take evolution on the authority of scientists. They don’t believe it because they themselves have examined the evidence and found it compelling; they believe it because many scientists say so.
That’s inconsistent. If they think it’s irrational to take things on authority, and yet they take evolution on authority, then by their own standards, they’re being irrational.
I think where they’ve gone wrong is in assuming it’s irrational to take things on authority. It’s not. If it were, then all of us would be irrational or else we wouldn’t know much at all. Most of what we know, we know because we learned it from somebody who was qualified to tell us. Think about it. Most of the education system is based on authority. That’s why colleges have math professors who are heavily educated in math, and history teachers who are heavily educated in history. When you take notes in a history class or read a history book, you’re learning things by taking them on the authority of the professor or the author. It would be next to impossible for us to research everything we were taught for ourselves, so we must take some things on authority or else remain largely in ignorance.
It is perfectly appropriate to take things on authority if the authority is qualified. It’s not irrational to get legal advice from lawyers, and it’s not irrational to get medical advice from doctors.
Now, of course, sometimes the authorities disagree with each other, and in those cases, you have to be more cautious about just believing anything they say.
Since most of us Christians don’t get direct revelations from God, we have to take many things on authority. The Bible, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, etc., are all authorities we base our beliefs on. The question is whether these sources are qualified, but that will be saved for future blogs.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Watch TV this Saturday night
Deepak Chopra, the popular New Age author, and Greg Koukl, an apologist from Stand to Reason, are going to argue for an hour on the TV show, Faith Under Fire, this Saturday, April 30, on Pax TV at 9:00 PM central time. It promises to be good. That's why I thought I'd mention it. If you're like me, and you don't have cable, find a friend who has cable and have them record it or go watch it at their house.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
We are ambassadors
Melinda Penner, from Stand to Reason said something on their blog that I thought was worth repeating here:
Every Christian is an Ambassador for Christ, every day, 24 hours a day. Whatever job we have, whatever task we do, whoever we serve, we can do it as for the Lord.Christianity is not just a hobby; it's a lifestyle.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Men have no right to speak against abortion!
Unless you are a woman, you have no right to say anything about abortion, because you don’t know what it’s like to have to make the kinds of decisions a pregnant woman has to make.
Unless you are married, you have no right to say anything about wife beaters, because you don’t know what it’s like to be married to a woman.
Unless you’re a slave-owner, you have no right to say anything about slavery, because you don’t know what it’s like to be a plantation owner.
What do all three arguments have in common? They are all forms of the ad hominem fallacy. Anybody with a brain has a right to make an argument, and whether an argument is sound or not has nothing to do with who makes the argument. What makes an argument sound is if the premises are true and the conclusion follows from the premises.
Unless you are married, you have no right to say anything about wife beaters, because you don’t know what it’s like to be married to a woman.
Unless you’re a slave-owner, you have no right to say anything about slavery, because you don’t know what it’s like to be a plantation owner.
What do all three arguments have in common? They are all forms of the ad hominem fallacy. Anybody with a brain has a right to make an argument, and whether an argument is sound or not has nothing to do with who makes the argument. What makes an argument sound is if the premises are true and the conclusion follows from the premises.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
unplugging the baby
The pro-life argument is pretty basic. It goes like this:
1. It's wrong to take the life of an innocent human being.
2. Abortion takes the life of an innocent human being.
3. Therefore, it's wrong to have an abortion.
Most people will already agree with the first premise, so the whole argument between pro-life people and pro-choice people revolves around the second premise.
As an aside, most pro-choice arguments suffer from irrelevence, because they don't address the second premise.
Suppose, though, that a pro-choice person agrees with the second premise (as some do), but still insist that women have a right to an abortion on the basis that a woman has sovereinty over her own body, and the unborn in her womb has no right to use her body without her consent. The argument would look like this:
4. A woman has a right to sovereignty over her own body.
5. Abortion involves the excercise of a woman's sovereignty over her own body.
6. Therefore, a woman has a right to have an abortion.
She dispute (1) on the basis that there is an exception that applies to all abortions. She would say that it's wrong to take the life of an innocent human being unless that being depends on the use of your body to survive. So she has rebutted the pro-life argument and constructed a pro-choice argument of her own. What do you do in a situation like that?
Well, you could dispute her first premise the same way she disputed yours. She disputed yours by finding an exception to it that applied to all abortions. You could dispute her first premise by finding an exception that applies when it involves another human life. Here's an analogy to explain.
Let's say a woman has an infant who is still breast-feeding. There's no such thing as formula, and nobody is willing to breast-feed the baby for her. Would she have the right to starve the baby to death on the basis that she has sovereignty over her own body? You see, the baby needs her body to survive.
If you say that she has an obligation to breast-feed, then that would require an exception to (4) that would exclude abortions from a woman's right to sovereignty over her own body. Since (4) was the basis for finding an exception to (1), the pro-life argument is once again intact.
I was arguing with a friend of mine about abortion, and when I used this analogy, she surprised me. She said the woman would have a right to let her baby starve, because she is under no obligation to let her baby use her breast to stay alive. At that point, I was stumped. I didn't know where to go from there.
Notice that my analogy is similar to the famous violinist analogy Judith Thompson came up with. Both analogies are meant to be analogous to abortion, but clearly the breast-feeding analogy is more analogous than the violinist analogy, so I think it could probably be used as a defeater to the famous violinist analogy.
1. It's wrong to take the life of an innocent human being.
2. Abortion takes the life of an innocent human being.
3. Therefore, it's wrong to have an abortion.
Most people will already agree with the first premise, so the whole argument between pro-life people and pro-choice people revolves around the second premise.
As an aside, most pro-choice arguments suffer from irrelevence, because they don't address the second premise.
Suppose, though, that a pro-choice person agrees with the second premise (as some do), but still insist that women have a right to an abortion on the basis that a woman has sovereinty over her own body, and the unborn in her womb has no right to use her body without her consent. The argument would look like this:
4. A woman has a right to sovereignty over her own body.
5. Abortion involves the excercise of a woman's sovereignty over her own body.
6. Therefore, a woman has a right to have an abortion.
She dispute (1) on the basis that there is an exception that applies to all abortions. She would say that it's wrong to take the life of an innocent human being unless that being depends on the use of your body to survive. So she has rebutted the pro-life argument and constructed a pro-choice argument of her own. What do you do in a situation like that?
Well, you could dispute her first premise the same way she disputed yours. She disputed yours by finding an exception to it that applied to all abortions. You could dispute her first premise by finding an exception that applies when it involves another human life. Here's an analogy to explain.
Let's say a woman has an infant who is still breast-feeding. There's no such thing as formula, and nobody is willing to breast-feed the baby for her. Would she have the right to starve the baby to death on the basis that she has sovereignty over her own body? You see, the baby needs her body to survive.
If you say that she has an obligation to breast-feed, then that would require an exception to (4) that would exclude abortions from a woman's right to sovereignty over her own body. Since (4) was the basis for finding an exception to (1), the pro-life argument is once again intact.
I was arguing with a friend of mine about abortion, and when I used this analogy, she surprised me. She said the woman would have a right to let her baby starve, because she is under no obligation to let her baby use her breast to stay alive. At that point, I was stumped. I didn't know where to go from there.
Notice that my analogy is similar to the famous violinist analogy Judith Thompson came up with. Both analogies are meant to be analogous to abortion, but clearly the breast-feeding analogy is more analogous than the violinist analogy, so I think it could probably be used as a defeater to the famous violinist analogy.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Organized religion
There's a lot of people out there who don't like organized religion. I suppose maybe they're okay with unorganized religion; it's just the organized kind they don't like.
That raises two questions for me. First, what is organized religion, and second, why do people have a problem with it? Presumably, if a person says they don't like something, they know what it is they don't like. It wouldn't make sense for somebody to say they don't like organized religion if they don't even know what they mean by "organized religion." So these questions are best answered by those people, and not me.
I'm going to offer some speculations, though. When people say "organized religion," I take them to mean the same thing as institutionalized religion. That is, a religion that has some structure involving different roles for different people, a government or heirarchy, etc. The Catholic Church is a good example. They've got a Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and ordinary folks. There are rules for how they run their organization.
When people say they are against organized religion, they could mean one of two things. Either they don't personally prefer to join one, or they don't want there to be any. If it's the first, I suppose there's not much you can say to a person who doesn't like organized religion anymore than there's anything you can say to somebody who doesn't like broccoli. It's just a matter of personal preference.
If it's the second, then that raises another question: What's wrong with organized religion that people don't want there to be any? I think there are two reasons. First, because they don't like authority, and second, because of the evil organized religions are capable of.
There are two senses in which a religious heirarchy can have authority. The first is just administrative. They tell you what to do. Some people don't like to be told what to do. The second is more religious. They tell you what to believe. People object to being told what to believe more than they object to being told what to do. If they don't accept that some leader is in any better position than them to know truths, then they can't accept anything the leader says merely on their authority. They must accept it because there is good evidence to think it's true. But if they must accept it on the authority of the leader, then this seems to require them to give up the use of their brain in order to submit to the authority of the leader.
An organization can be more effective than an individual, because an organization can divide up responsibilities, so that people can pool their abilities together for a common purpose. In the past, that has often amounted to some evils, such as the inquisition. These kinds of evils scare people away from organized religion.
My only response is that evil isn't a necessary byproduct of organized religion. The common purpose can be good just as well as evil. So I personally would not object to organized religion just because it's organized. If anything, I would only object to it's purpose if that purpose were evil. Many religious organizations pool their resources for a common goal which is good. For example, my own church likes to build homes for poor people in other countries, and it takes a team effort. There are those who finance it, those who do the planning, those who supervise, and those who do the manual labor.
Christians organized themselves into churches, not just for the benefit of the poor, but for the mutual benefit of each other. As Paul points out in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, the purpose of the church is to build each other up in the faith and knowledge of Jesus Christ, and we are all gifted in different ways so that we're able to contribute. We need each other.
That raises two questions for me. First, what is organized religion, and second, why do people have a problem with it? Presumably, if a person says they don't like something, they know what it is they don't like. It wouldn't make sense for somebody to say they don't like organized religion if they don't even know what they mean by "organized religion." So these questions are best answered by those people, and not me.
I'm going to offer some speculations, though. When people say "organized religion," I take them to mean the same thing as institutionalized religion. That is, a religion that has some structure involving different roles for different people, a government or heirarchy, etc. The Catholic Church is a good example. They've got a Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, and ordinary folks. There are rules for how they run their organization.
When people say they are against organized religion, they could mean one of two things. Either they don't personally prefer to join one, or they don't want there to be any. If it's the first, I suppose there's not much you can say to a person who doesn't like organized religion anymore than there's anything you can say to somebody who doesn't like broccoli. It's just a matter of personal preference.
If it's the second, then that raises another question: What's wrong with organized religion that people don't want there to be any? I think there are two reasons. First, because they don't like authority, and second, because of the evil organized religions are capable of.
There are two senses in which a religious heirarchy can have authority. The first is just administrative. They tell you what to do. Some people don't like to be told what to do. The second is more religious. They tell you what to believe. People object to being told what to believe more than they object to being told what to do. If they don't accept that some leader is in any better position than them to know truths, then they can't accept anything the leader says merely on their authority. They must accept it because there is good evidence to think it's true. But if they must accept it on the authority of the leader, then this seems to require them to give up the use of their brain in order to submit to the authority of the leader.
An organization can be more effective than an individual, because an organization can divide up responsibilities, so that people can pool their abilities together for a common purpose. In the past, that has often amounted to some evils, such as the inquisition. These kinds of evils scare people away from organized religion.
My only response is that evil isn't a necessary byproduct of organized religion. The common purpose can be good just as well as evil. So I personally would not object to organized religion just because it's organized. If anything, I would only object to it's purpose if that purpose were evil. Many religious organizations pool their resources for a common goal which is good. For example, my own church likes to build homes for poor people in other countries, and it takes a team effort. There are those who finance it, those who do the planning, those who supervise, and those who do the manual labor.
Christians organized themselves into churches, not just for the benefit of the poor, but for the mutual benefit of each other. As Paul points out in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4, the purpose of the church is to build each other up in the faith and knowledge of Jesus Christ, and we are all gifted in different ways so that we're able to contribute. We need each other.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
The moral argument for the existence of God
In the last couple of blogs, I've been developing an argument for the existence of God. Now I want to state the argument explicitly.
1. If there is no God, then there are no objective moral values.
2. There are objective moral values.
3. Therefore, there is a God.
A couple of years ago, I really tried to develope this argument in a pursuasive way, and I came up with several ways to demonstrate the truth of both premises. In the last two blogs, I gave one way to demonstrate each. In some future blogs, I'm going to throw out other arguments. Some of these are better than others. Some are probably flawed. My whole purpose is to come up with the most pursuasive arguments I can, and to be able to articulate them in the clearest way possible.
1. If there is no God, then there are no objective moral values.
2. There are objective moral values.
3. Therefore, there is a God.
A couple of years ago, I really tried to develope this argument in a pursuasive way, and I came up with several ways to demonstrate the truth of both premises. In the last two blogs, I gave one way to demonstrate each. In some future blogs, I'm going to throw out other arguments. Some of these are better than others. Some are probably flawed. My whole purpose is to come up with the most pursuasive arguments I can, and to be able to articulate them in the clearest way possible.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Does anything really matter?
Nothing matters unless there's somebody it matters to. Imagine if there were no sentient beings in the universe--neither human, alien, nor spirit. There is only matter and energy. In a universe like that, all kinds of things may be going on. Stars nova, commets smash into planets, and galaxies are formed. But none of it matters if there's nobody it matters to. It doesn't even matter whether anything is happening at all. It doesn't matter whether the universe even exists or not. Since it doesn't matter, there is no particular way things ought to be. "Ought" applies to nothing at all in a universe like that. So there is neither right nor wrong, good nor evil. Things just are.
Now consider the human condition. Here we are on a tiny spec of dust in the universe called "Earth," having recently come to the realization that in a few billion years, the Sun is going to begin to expand until all life on earth is destroyed. Assuming by that time we haven't figured out how to set up colonies on other planets in other solar systems, humans will cease to exist.
That raises a question: Once humans are gone, will it matter that they ever existed at all? It can only matter if there's somebody it matters to. If there's nobody it matters to, then it will not have mattered. If it doesn't matter that humans ever existed at all, then nothing humans did while they existed matters.
That raises another question: Since humans haven't ceased to exist yet, does anything matter now? Again, it only matters if there's somebody it matters to. Perhaps it matters to humans themselves. Individuals and societies pour significance into the various things that happen to people, but they don't all pour the same significance. Suppose, for example, that some nice old lady is skinned alive and left to die because some sadistic crazy person thought it might be fun to watch. One person might be outraged, but another person may not care at all. Does it matter or not?
Well, it matters to one person, but not to the other. There is no objective answer to the question, though. There is no ultimate meaning in it at all if significance depends merely on human preferences.
The only way there can be a correct answer to the question--an answer that is true whether two people agree with it or not--is if there is some sentient being who transcends humanity. This being must not only be sentient and stand over and above humanity, but this being must have some ultimacy about it. It must be some sort of necessary being, a being on which everything else depends, and therefore is invested with its meaning. Only if this being exists can anything matter in any ultimate sense. If there is no such being, then nothing ultimately matters.
If there is a necessary, sentient, and transcendent being on which everything else depends, and things matter to this being, then there can be ultimate meaning. Things like suffering and death would not just be things we either care about or don't, but they would be real tragedies whether we recognized it or not, because it would matter to the ultimate being.
Without supposing that such a being exists, we can appropriately call the being "God" since the being is necessary, sentient, trancendent, and is a being on which everything else depends for its existence and meaning. If there is no God, then nothing matters in any objective sense, because meaning is left to the subjective preferences of contingent and transient beings, like humans. If nothing matters in any objective sense, then there is no particular way things ought to be. If there's no particular way things ought to be, then there's no right or wrong, good or evil. In short, if there is no God, then there are no objective moral values.
For more on this subject, check out The Absurdity of Life Without God by William Lane Craig.
Now consider the human condition. Here we are on a tiny spec of dust in the universe called "Earth," having recently come to the realization that in a few billion years, the Sun is going to begin to expand until all life on earth is destroyed. Assuming by that time we haven't figured out how to set up colonies on other planets in other solar systems, humans will cease to exist.
That raises a question: Once humans are gone, will it matter that they ever existed at all? It can only matter if there's somebody it matters to. If there's nobody it matters to, then it will not have mattered. If it doesn't matter that humans ever existed at all, then nothing humans did while they existed matters.
That raises another question: Since humans haven't ceased to exist yet, does anything matter now? Again, it only matters if there's somebody it matters to. Perhaps it matters to humans themselves. Individuals and societies pour significance into the various things that happen to people, but they don't all pour the same significance. Suppose, for example, that some nice old lady is skinned alive and left to die because some sadistic crazy person thought it might be fun to watch. One person might be outraged, but another person may not care at all. Does it matter or not?
Well, it matters to one person, but not to the other. There is no objective answer to the question, though. There is no ultimate meaning in it at all if significance depends merely on human preferences.
The only way there can be a correct answer to the question--an answer that is true whether two people agree with it or not--is if there is some sentient being who transcends humanity. This being must not only be sentient and stand over and above humanity, but this being must have some ultimacy about it. It must be some sort of necessary being, a being on which everything else depends, and therefore is invested with its meaning. Only if this being exists can anything matter in any ultimate sense. If there is no such being, then nothing ultimately matters.
If there is a necessary, sentient, and transcendent being on which everything else depends, and things matter to this being, then there can be ultimate meaning. Things like suffering and death would not just be things we either care about or don't, but they would be real tragedies whether we recognized it or not, because it would matter to the ultimate being.
Without supposing that such a being exists, we can appropriately call the being "God" since the being is necessary, sentient, trancendent, and is a being on which everything else depends for its existence and meaning. If there is no God, then nothing matters in any objective sense, because meaning is left to the subjective preferences of contingent and transient beings, like humans. If nothing matters in any objective sense, then there is no particular way things ought to be. If there's no particular way things ought to be, then there's no right or wrong, good or evil. In short, if there is no God, then there are no objective moral values.
For more on this subject, check out The Absurdity of Life Without God by William Lane Craig.
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