What makes a belief rational?

Usually when we think of a rational belief, we think of a belief that is held for good reasons. There are two ways a belief might be held for good reason, though. One way is that some evidence or line of sound reasoning resulted in the belief. That's true of a posteriori beliefs. Another way is that a person can, by reflecting on something, grasp the necessity of it. That's true of at least some a priori beliefs.

But what about other beliefs such as the belief in the reliability of our cognitive faculties, our sensory perceptions, and our memories? There's no necessity to these beliefs. Whether there is any line of reasoning that could lead to these beliefs is questionable. If there were a line of reasoning that lead to these beliefs, it's likely that the premises would be less certain than the belief itself, which means the belief is probably not held because of that line of reasoning.

Some beliefs appear to be hard wired. They're just built in. We automatically assume that past experience can tell us something about what to expect in the future. We automatically assume that we remember things because a past really happened. Some people become philosophers and begin to question these things, but even people who question them find it hard to do so. They have to continuously resist the temptation to attribute truth to these seemingly built in notions.

So what justifies them? Since they cannot be justified on the basis of sound reasons, nor on the basis of their necessity, it seems like the only way to justify them is on the basis of their causes. If they are caused by a reliable mechanism, then they can be trusted, but if they are caused by an unreliable mechanism, then they can't be trusted.

Suppose these beliefs are caused merely by the structure and activity of the brain. We would have to trust that the brain is built in such a way as to be reliable. We can trust a calculator to give us the right answers because calculators were designed by people with accuracy in mind. With brains, they had to have come about in one of two ways--either they were engineered or they arose through purely blind and natural processes.

Suppose the brain was engineered. Before we could trust the deliverances of our brains, we'd first have to presuppose the trustworthiness of the engineer. After all, it's possible somebody could stick a probe in your brain and cause you to believe all sorts of things that aren't true. Maybe we don't have the technology yet, but it's conceivable that the technology could exist. So if we held a belief that was caused by an engineer who designed our brains in such a way as to produce that belief or he somehow installed that belief into our brains, would that belief be rational?

I don't know, but I suspect you'd need the presupposition that the engineer was honest/reliable or that the engineer designed the brain in such a way as to produce true a priori beliefs. Otherwise, the belief might not be rational.

But then how would you justify the belief that the engineer was reliable and had truth in mind when designing the brain or installing the beliefs? It seems like the only way to justify that belief is purely on pragmatic grounds. We have no choice but to trust our cognitive faculties. We couldn't rationally doubt them unless we could trust them, so to doubt them is self-refuting. If I say, "My brain is an unreliable truth-generating machine," I would have no rational basis upon which to believe that statement is true since my brain is the only thing could possibly tell me whether or not it's true.

Maybe it's rational to trust our brains merely because it's irrational not to, and it's irrational not to because any claim that our brains are unreliable will necessarily be a self-refuting claim. Of course self-refuting claims aren't necessarily false. It depends. A claim can be self-refuting in one of two ways. It can be self-refuting in such a way that if it is true, then its false, in which case it's necessarily false, or it can be self-refuting in such a way that if it's true, then it can never be justified, in which case it isn't necessarily false. The self-refuting nature of claiming that the brain is an unreliable truth-producing machine is self-refuting in the second sense, but not the first. (Maybe we should call the second sense "self-undermining" instead of "self-refuting.") So while it may be irrational to doubt the reliability of your brain, that doesn't necessarily mean your brain is reliable. It just means it's more rational to affirm the reliability of your brain (since you can do so consistently) than it is to deny the reliability of your brain (since you cannot do so consistently).

If we must trust the reliability of our brains on pain of self-refutation, then it seems like we must also believe that the brain was produced in such a way as to guaranty its reliability. So if you believe the brain was engineered, then you must believe the engineer was honest and had truth in mind when he designed the brain. Otherwise, you're being irrational.

The alternative is to believe the brain evolved naturally in such a way as to be reliable. In this case, nobody meant for the brain to hold true beliefs. It's just that holding true beliefs was conducive to survival and reproduction. I don't want to explore this right now because it would take us into Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. I'll just say that if a sound argument can be made for why we should expect the brain to be reliable on the supposition that it evolved naturally, then that would give us a rational ground for our built in beliefs.

So basically, I think our beliefs can be rational on the basis of sound reasoning from true premises, intuitively grasping the necessity of them, or having them be built into our brains under the presupposition that the brain was produced in such a way as to be a reliable belief producing machine, whether that entails presupposing a brain engineer or a truth-favoring evolutionary process (or some combination of the two).

I have a lot more to say about this, but I guess this post is long enough already.

The value of resolving the intellectual problem of evil

I've heard a lot of stories about people who lost their faith because of some personal tragedy in their own lives. I know people personally who rejected God for that reason. I'm always a little bit taken aback when this happens to Christians. Were they unaware that bad things happen in the world? Did they not know about medieval tortures like the brazen bull? If those tragedies didn't disprove God, then why does their own tragedy disprove God? Did they not think about these things before hand?

Now I realize that a personal tragedy has an impact on you in a way that abstract or remote tragedies don't. But the difference is primarily emotional, not intellectual. That's why I think everybody should resolve the problem of evil intellectually long before tragedy hits. That way, you aren't taken off guard. You aren't shocked to find that God must not care about you after all. Your emotions will not have full control over how you view God.

Tragedy hit my own family several years ago. When it did, I reminded myself that I had worked out the problem of evil, and that what happened to us did not disprove God. I leaned on that, and I kept my faith because of it. I didn't have to think about what God's reasons could possibly be for allowing it to happen right in the middle of being upset. That's the worst time to try to work out the problem of evil.

So I really wish people would think about this problem before tragedy hits so they aren't taken off guard when it does. And I wish they would teach these things to each other. And don't think just about things like, "How can there be a good God if there is torture and rape in the world?" Also ask yourself, "How can there be a good God if I or somebody I loved were tortured and raped?" After resolving the logical problem, ask yourself how your point of view ought to be any different if something awful happened to you. Once you have that worked out, then when you're in the situation, you're a lot less likely to become an atheist or a God-hater.

Winners and losers in history

I remember a long time ago having a conversation on a message board about how "history is written by the winners." This statement was brought up in an attempt to undermine history, which I thought was a mistake because it assumed that losers can write accurate history, but winners can't.

I was thinking about that this morning when it occurred to me that one needs to adopt the opposite point of view in order to warn people not to be "on the wrong side of history." This warning about not being on the wrong side of history assumes that winners are always in the moral right, and losers are in the moral wrong.

Why think either of these things? Why be suspicious of history just because it was written by winners? And why be suspicious of a moral point of view just because it's held by losers?

I don't think anybody should worry about being on the wrong side of history. To worry about such a thing is to presuppose that morality is grounded in the whims of cultural fads. But if you think morality is an objective thing, and especially if you think it's grounded in God, then it shouldn't concern you in the least whether you might some day be on the wrong side of history.

It isn't even true that winners always write history. History is written by people who look at multiple sources--some by the winners and some by the losers. Almost all of the information we have about the first Jewish revolt against Rome comes from the losers, for example.

Calvinism in a nutshell

Sometimes when I talk to people in on line forums, I'll mention that I'm a Calvinist, and somebody will ask, "What's a Calvinist?" or "What is Calvinism?" Instead of explaining it over and over again, I thought I'd just leave this here for a quick reference so I can just find it and cut and paste from it whenever I need to. I'm lazy that way.

See also my post on "One point Calvinism."

Calvinism is a theological point of view that came out of the protestant reformation. Essentially, it boils down to the absolute sovereignty of God, especially when it comes to the subject of salvation. Calvinism is typically summarized by five points which all derive from the one principle of the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation. Here are the five points of Calvinism:

• Total depravity--This is the view that apart from God's intervention, people have an inability to come to Christ for salvation. Our desires, character, hearts, etc. are in such a fallen state that we would never go to Christ for salvation willingly unless God changed us.
• Unconditional election--This is the view that out of all the people who have existed, God elects some of them for salvation, and he does so purely for his own good pleasure and not because of anything any of them did to deserve it.
• Limited atonement--This is the view that God only intended Christ's death on the cross to atone for the sins of those God elected to receive salvation. Most Calvinists prefer to call this "particular atonement" rather than "limited atonement" since even non-Calvinists limit the atonement in one way or another.
• Irresistible grace--This is the idea that when God bestows his grace on his elect, those people will come to Christ for salvation. Having their hearts changed, they will not be able to resist the draw. In other words, they are unable to reject Christ.
• Preservation of the saints--This is the view that all of those who God has caused to embrace Christ will continue to embrace Christ until they die. Of course they can backslide from time to time, but the over all effect is that they will remain in Christ.

There are some additional points that typically go along with Calvinist theology called "the five solas":

• Sola scripture: This is the view that the Bible alone is God's infallible source of theological truth. This is not a denial that God can reveal things through prophets, though some Calvinists interpret it that way. Rather, it's the view that the Bible alone is the rule of faith for the Christian church. So any other supposed authority, whether a person claims it came from God or not, should be scrutinized in light of its consistency with scripture. Scripture is the ultimate test of theological truths.
• Sola Fide: This is the view that it is through faith alone that we are justified. In other words, our good deeds do not contribute to our justification.
• Sola gratia: This is the view that we are saved by the grace of God alone. In other words, salvation is a gift from God that is not based on any merit of our own.
• Sola Christus: This is the view that Christ alone is our savior. This is something almost all Christians believe.
• Soli Deo Gloria: This is the idea that God alone is glorified in salvation. The reason for it is because salvation is totally and completely the work of God alone. He gets the glory because he accomplishes it. Calvinists are monergists, as opposed to synergists. That means salvation isn't a cooperative effort between man and God where man does his part and God does his part; rather, God does it all. God takes people who are dead in sins and unable to repent or come to Christ for salvation, and he heals them, draws them to himself, and justifies them, giving them salvation, and he does it all for his glory.

A difficulty with Calvinism and compatibilism

According to the doctrine of total depravity, we are determined by our sinful desires to reject Christ. We are unable to accept Christ for psychological reasons. Yet we are still responsible for our sinfulness. In fact, according to compatibilism, it's is because our actions are determined by our own desires and motives that we are responsible for them. We are responsible for our actions to the degree that we do them on purpose, and we do them on purpose do the degree that they are determined by our own antecedent psychological states, including our desires, plans, motives, inclinations, preferences, etc.

According to the doctrine of irresistible grace, once God changes our hearts, we are determined by our new desires to embrace Christ. We are unable to resist Christ, again, for psychological reasons. But here's the difficulty. Whereas we could be blamed for our sins and for our failure to come to Christ when we were totally depraved since we acted willfully, on purpose, out of our own sinful desires, etc., we cannot be praised for our decision to follow Christ, even though we do so willfully, on purpose, and because of our desire to do so. The reason is because it is God who changed our hearts.

Irresistible grace is supposed to remove all basis for boasting on our parts because it makes salvation a monergistic act of God. We cannot be praised for our decision to come to Christ because it is God who acted in us to produce that result. Since God brought about the change, he gets all the glory, and there is no room for boasting on our parts.

But surely something causes us to have the desire to reject Christ and to sin. Why should it matter what is doing the causing? Suppose the devil caused us to have sinful desires. Would that mean we're not blamable for sin? Or what if it's just that we inherited a sinful nature or sinful genes or whatever? Somehow or other, something outside of us ultimately caused us to have sinful desires. Yet we are morally responsible for giving into them.

So why is it that if God causes us to have good desires, and those desires cause us to follow Christ, that we are not just as praiseworthy for doing so as we were blameworthy for sinning? In both cases, we acted out of desires that were created in us by external causes.

Jonathan Edwards argued persuasively in his book on the freedom of the will that "The essence of the virtue and vice of dispositions of the heart, and acts of the will, lies not in their cause, but their nature." I wish I could ask Jonathan Edwards about this. I wonder what James White would say. I wonder what John Piper would say. John Piper would probably be a better person to ask since he's a big fan of Edwards like I am.

What do you think?

What determines gender?

A while back, I wrote a post explaining how I didn't understand transgenderism. I think I have a better handle on it now, but I think there's an inconsistency in how people define gender.

A lot of us still think gender is determined by your biological sex (unless you're talking about words or pipe fittings). But there are two mutually exclusive definitions of gender being used by the transgendered community as well as people who are sympathetic to their redefinition. Here are the two definitions that I keep coming across:

1. Gender is determined by your behavior. If you look and behave in ways that are typically associated with the looks and behavior of people who have one sex organ or the other, then that's your gender.

2. Gender is determined by your self-identification. If you see yourself as being a man, then your gender is male, and if you see yourself as being a woman, then your gender is female.

This morning I saw a guy write this post on a discussion forum, and he vacillated between these two different definitions without even realizing he was doing it. But these are mutually exclusive definitions.

Imagine a person who sees themselves as a man but nevertheless behaves in ways typically associated with people who have vaginas. Is that person's gender male or female? Well, you get contradictory answers depending on whether you think gender is determined by your behavior or your self-identification.

How are the rest of us supposed to get behind the redefinition of "gender" if we can't even get a clear explanation of what it means by the people who are redefining it?

Sibling rivalry and the beginning of time

Greg Koukl has this tactic he calls "sibling rivalry." That's when somebody raises two objections, often unrelated to each other, but these objections are inconsistent with each other. The tactic is just to point it out. You say something like, "When you were objecting to this thing, you said P, but now that you're objecting to this other thing, you say not-P. Which is it?"

I wanted to mention one example of this I was just thinking about today. There are two philosophical arguments for why time had to have had a beginning. There are more than two, of course, but there's just two I want to talk about right now. One of them is the argument from the impossibility of an actual infinite. The other is from the Grim Reaper Paradox.

In response to the argument from the impossibility of an actual infinite, people will sometimes point out that a line of any finite length can be divided infinitely, or they point out that a line of any finite length is made up of an infinite number of points.

In response to the Grim Reaper Paradox, people will point out that once you reach the Planck time, you cannot divide time any further, so you cannot fit an infinite number of Grim Reapers into a finite interval of time.

These objections are at odds with each other. If Planck time was all that prevented us from carrying out a thought experiment involving Grim Reapers, then surely Planck length would just as well prevent us from carrying out a thought experiment involving the division of some length. But if Planck length is irrelevant to the thought experiment involving the division of some finite length, then Planck time is irrelevant to the thought experiment involving Grim Reapers.

So one of these objections fails no matter how you look at it. That means at least one of these arguments for the beginning of time survives the objections.

Arguments from incoherence

There's a whole family of arguments against God's existence that try to show that there is an incoherence in the omni attributes of God. They all take basically the same form. They ask if God could do something and argue that if he can, then it violates one of his other attributes, or if he can't, then it violates his omnipotence. So either way, a God with all these omni's can't exist.

Here's a few examples:

If God exists, then he is both all powerful and perfectly good.
If God is capable of doing evil, then he is not perfectly good.
If God is not capable of doing evil, then he is not all powerful.
Therefore, God does not exist.

If God exists, then he is all powerful.
If God can create a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it, then he is not all powerful.
If God cannot create a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it, then he is not all powerful.
Therefore, God does not exist.

If God exists, then he is all knowing and all powerful.
If God can change his mind, then he is not all knowing.
If God cannot change his mind, then he is not all powerful.
Therefore, God does not exist.

If God exists, then he knows everything and can do everything.
If God can create information that he doesn’t know, then he is not all knowing.
If God cannot create information that he doesn’t know, then he is not all powerful.
Therefore, God does not exist.

I decided to write on these today because that last one has come up twice just in the last two days in my on line discussions which makes me wonder if there's a meme floating around out there, or some popular atheist out there said something that's gone viral or something. Anyway, I thought I'd address it.

All of these types of arguments are trivially easy to answer. The usual way of answering them is by pointing out that they all assume an incorrect definition of omnipotence, then correcting the definition. Sometimes this results in an argument over what the real meaning of omnipotence is. But it doesn't matter. All of these arguments fail no matter what definition of omnipotence you use. Here are the competing definitions of God's omnipotence:

1. God can do all things logically possible.
2. God can do anything whatsoever, including violate the laws of logic.

If (1) is true, then all the arguments fail because each of these arguments is asking whether God could actualize a logical contradictory state of affairs. A state of affairs in which God is omniscient but doesn't know everything is a contradiction, so God can't create information that an all knowing God doesn't know. A state of affairs in which God can do anything but can't lift a rock is a contradiction, so God can't create a rock that an all powerful God can't lift. If omnipotence doesn't include the ability to do logically impossible things, then God's inability to do these things doesn't count against his omnipotence.

If (2) is true, then all the arguments fail because because they remove any basis for saying there's anything God can't do. God could create a rock he can't lift and still be able to lift it. He could be all powerful even if he's not all powerful. He could create information he doesn't know and still know it. He could be all knowing even if he's not all knowing. He can be perfectly good even if he's evil. He can change his mind even if he doesn't change his mind. There is no state of affairs he couldn't actualize and still be omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good.

So regardless of how you define omnipotence, these kinds of arguments from incoherence always fail.