See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

 

Jeff: What I think is apriori is our teleogical thought processes. That article I linked on the General Chat a few months ago was a report of a study by psychologists that found that children think teleologically in a promiscuous way. As they get older they do less so, they claimed. I disagree, I think people still think teleologically, just not as animistic or what have you. They learn to see longer and longer ranges of means to the ends. Most folks are theists, after all.

 

But it is this natural teleological thinking that makes me think people get their idea of God from eventually seeing mind as the corollary of means-ends relationships. To me, this is analogous to eventually seeing that infinite is the corollary of finite. Thought the child may not see either of these corollaries for a few years. And it is this that I think Paul is alluding to when he talks of what humans know from creation alone. But I totally agree with you that we don't come to hold a belief about God's essential benevolence apart from the Holy Spirit.

 

But I think if we didn't turn from that knowledge of the Creator obtained from creation and our own teleological thinking (as Paul says we tend to do), but sought God with humility and intellectual honesty, we'd get a lot closer to realizing consciously that our own capacity to apprehend finds its ground in benevolent design rather than chance or malevolent/deistic design. I think we typically turn out of the way of the road less traveled too soon to get anywhere. We run from rather than seek God until the Hound of Heaven tracks us back down. If we'd sought, we would have found.

 

But as I see it, properly basic beliefs are the most certain beliefs we have. As Lewis said, if nothing is obvious, nothing can be proved.

Corey: Really? We can succeed in an a priori proof of God's existence via teleological arguments? I'm not so sure. In any event, this still seems like an a posteriori argument; knowledge comes after having experienced the energies of God in his creation.

 

Jeff: Yes, temporally, belief in God as a corollary of teleology comes after teleological thinking, and teleological thinking is occasioned originally by sense experience, it seems. Similarly, the conception of infinite comes after the experience of finite, to use my prior analogy. But if "mind" is indeed a corollary of a means->end relationship, and if humans do think teleologically (which is undeniable), that is one way to explain why virtually all humans are theists and/or behave as theists.

 

Even the atheistic scientists Dawkins and Crick say that it is hard to resist the urge to think of biological entities as being designed for a purpose. Moreover, Michael Shermer says about 25% of atheists pray. Something basically fundamental in our cognition must explain this, I think. For there are no proofs for God's existence that I'm aware of.

Corey: At best, we can build what SK calls "a bridge of probability". And, he regards this bridge quite negatively, because anyway it never succeeds in crossing the gap, and is intended to diminish our need for God, which is a human's highest perfection.

 

Jeff: I have no idea of how one can build a bridge of probability for God's existence if we don't have, as a category, the relation of final cause->mean(s)->end(s). We could explain it as a universal revelation of God. But that has the same implication. Either way, it's properly basic. Certain concepts/relations seem to be in-abstractable from raw sense experience. These include causality and teleology, to my mind. If not, how do we account for the fact that young children think teleologically promiscuously, per that study I mentioned? Are they apprehending teleology with their senses? In either case, it seems like teleology must be very fundamental in our cognition.

 

Corey: I recall Plantinga evaluating arguments for the resurrection of Christ, and his basic point was that at best we can conclude that there is some probability that this occurred. But, that does not mean that this belief lacks warrant, only that it does not come by means of various historical arguments. Rather, we have warrant to believe Jesus raised from the dead because today, now, immediately, we have the Spirit of Christ which testifies of him.

Jeff: But even Plantinga says there are degrees of warrant, right? If so, then a natural theist could find warrant in the gospel accounts without having the same degree of warrant as one with the Spirit. IOW, if people are naturally teleologists, and hence theists (as seems the case), why would the bible seem less like a probable account of reality than other accounts? I've known people who grew up going to church with their parents who became agnostics thereafter. One of them told me he continued to church a while to see if the Spirit would convict him.

 

The only two arguments that I've heard against the bible by most moderners is the problem of evil and the supposed proof of the historical falsehood of the OT. But people who don't know much history or are not swayed by the problem of evil might very well find the biblical theological account the one which, more than the others they are aware of, smacks of the Designer of the universe as they conceive of Him. In that sense, they have warrant for believing it probabilistically. It's just not the same degree of warrant as one who does not receive the gospel "in word only."

 

I've known people who showed no zeal for God, and yet they have some gut-level sense that the bible is the "word of God." I think they have valid, probablistic warrant for that belief.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

 

Of course we should bear in mind that testimony itself is only a signpost to something else; their formulations in themselves are equally futile as the philospher's syllogisms.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

 

Jeff: So the board should just be testimony, then? I'm fine with that.

 

Corey: I'm still contending that knowledge is not a "more or less" sort of thing; knowledge either is, or isn't.

 

Jeff: I agree. But isn't it still true that what we call knowledge is belief with some subjective sense of certainty? I mean, we do still distinguish between illusion and non-illusion, deceived and undeceived, right? As long as illusion and deceit are real states, what we call knowledge is a belief. But definitely it is true that one either knows or doesn't know. But that's just because, like you say, there are only two logical possibilities in the matter. And that's because of the law of non-contradiction which we believe holds for all propositions.

 

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Speculation in itself can be a form of worship, as far as I'm concerned: theology is doxology. That's a qualitatively different project than presuming that we're actually arriving somewhere.

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Before God, in grace, we will with all our power to be that which He shows us we are.

 

Jeff: Right. That's why we change our minds about things like UR, e.g. I'm always seeing new ways to look at things. But here's the 2 things that I can't shake:

 

1) Humans (at least non-atheists) DO have a pretty good consensus on the kind of deductive and inductive thought processes that warrant certain conclusions. These conclusions are not absolute knowledge. But as long as there are degrees of warrant, and as long as there is pretty good consensus on what kinds of deductive and inductive thought processes warrant belief in certain conclusions, we will continue to reason with one another thus if for no other reason than that it is one of the ways we experience satisfying community as rational beings.

 

Consider my debates with Zach and Tom's with D. In the course of these debates, there are times when private revelation is appealed to. But my bandwagon is that private revelation is, well, private. Private revelation, per se, can provide no one else with warrant for the simple fact that there are myriads of people who claim to have private revelation, and these revelations are contradictory to one another. So the only way private revelation can provide warrant to those to whom the revelation was not given is if we dump the law of non-contradiction or if those who have received the revelation do signs, wonders, or some manner of life that resonates with us at some intuitive level.

 

Now signs and wonders are just different forms of non-private evidence. And resonation with some kind of intuition we have can be either private or it can be communal (if the community has that same intuition). But the point is, when something is private, it's private. And any attempt to convince our neighbor of that which is only privately known will come across as condescending. Christ himself said to the pharisees and scribes, if you don't believe me, believe my works. He never insulted anyone's intelligence for not believing what there was not real, communal warrant for. He did criticise them for their hypocrisy and unbelief when there was strong communal warrant for belief.

 

2) My first band-wagon about private revelation has a corollary. When we pronounce judgments on what is right/wrong by public rhetoric, it seems futile to appeal to private revelation to do so. Christ himself did no such thing. He appealed to the law, his signs and wonders, etc. Never did Christ publicly express judgment based on his own private revelation except, perhaps, to those who expressed faith in his prophetic role, who had "ears to hear." But even then, sufficient warrant had already been supplied in the form of signs, wonders, and consistency with the OT. No one on this forum has done the equivalent of that for one another.

 

The bottom line is, we are communal and rational creatures. We crave rational discussion with each other. We find it frustrating that we don't agree at times. But we can't rid ourselves of the desire to know truth by those epistemological modes God has designed us to use. If this forum turned into a "testimony only" forum, I would seek rational discourse elsewhere for that very reason. I think everyone on this forum profits from it if for no other reason than we are all ridding ourselves of beliefs that we come to believe have insufficient warrant and we are gaining perspectives that help us add beliefs with newly discovered warrant.

 

If we don't all convince one another of our own point of view, we are still profiting in this way, regardless. And I find the patience and forebearance of those that are willing to hang with this exercise to be the equivalent of an oasis in the desert. I don't see anything like this kind of patience and forebearance in the average church.

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See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

---

 

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

 

Jeff: I totally agree. For the most part, I try not to debate with folks if it becomes clear that we don't hold common starting points or that we can't agree to common starting points once that difference has become obvious in a discussion. Same thing with Christ, I think. There were common grounds that he and the scribes mutually avowed to because of being born "under the law." That gave them some commonality whereby Christ could reasonably make comprehendible criticisms of their views. And consequently, the scribes and pharisees were convicted and even embarassed by him many a time. But I don't think Christ would have argued similarly with aboriginees in Australia.

 

As I see it, we have to first apply effort to being "fully persuaded" in our own mind. For all that is not of faith is sin. Then, we have to realize that we all have different backgrounds, different strengths and weaknesses, etc. And then we have to try to speak according to the perceived need. All this is difficult enough for a wise man. For those like me who are a work in progress, it's even more difficult. And I know I've made my share of mistakes and will continue to do so.

 

Most of my time recently has been spent with Zach. I have done this for a couple of reasons. Zach seems to desire discussing those topics that he is passionate about to the point of maintaining a dialogue for a long time. Anyone willing to continue an exchange like that is worth engaging, to me, even if we don't change one anothers mind. I've learned a lot about the Sermon precisely because of Zach (or at least I think I have!).

 

The other reason is this: Zach, at times, has claimed that his view of "resist not an evil man" is the best textual interpretation. By that, I assume he means it's the best inductive interpretation per normal exegetical rules. There are experts who can take texts of dead languages and bring them back to life. So there are ways to determine what texts most probably mean from induction alone (yes, "probably"; for new interpretations are made when new information comes in; this same kind of thing is why I changed my mind about Christ's statement to Judas and its implications for UR).

 

But in no case do such experts assume that said texts have to be true. They're just determining what it seems like an author was saying. Indeed, if they made the extra assumption that a text had to be true to be decoded successfully, they probably couldn't get very far with a lot of ancient, religious texts of dead languages.

 

At other times, Zach appeals to what he sees as a self-evident principle that no compulsion can legitimately be applied to an adult without their consent; or what he thinks the Spirit is leading him to believe. But here's the thing: all 3 of those grounds for his interpretation of "resist not an evil man" are distinct.

 

With respect to the inductive approach, I'm willing to engage him, because that's a debatable subject. Because we have the very probabilistic approaches that you mention which we can take in our debates. With respect to the view that it is self-evident that God can not righteously act contrary to an adult's voluntary consent, it is obvious that the vast majority of humans (including myself) do not believe any such thing. Thus, I can only state that and move on.

 

With respect to his claim that the Spirit is leading him to his interpretation of "resist not an evil man," I certainly am not going to argue with that. I would only point out that private interpretation is, well, private, and therefore I can not be expected to know what he knows in that way. For where little is given, little is required. In those cases, I think we pray for one another and rest in the fact that God will not allow us to be tempted above what we are able so long as we are being intellectually honest where we're at with what we have to work with.

 

IOW, I'm always trying to see what the grounds of one's argument are so I can respond accordingly, if at all. As I've said before, the only thing I expect (rather, need) of any person that wants to initiate a discussion with me is a commitment to the law-of-non-contradition and a sufficiently common starting point. If I determine in the discussion that I don't have both of these, then I think it's counter-productive to continue debate. Again, I know I make many mistakes and get frustrated from misinterpretaion and lack of time to respond fully, but this is my basic approach to dialogue of any kind--not just theological.

 

I'm interested in what you think of it, Corey. Do you think I'm amiss? And if so, how?

 

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Jeff: I totally agree. And for me, the main point of it is to temper unwarranted public judgment of others. But every now and then, I get those little pieces of treasure like the stuff Tom found in Ecclessiastes that helped me with the Judas passage. Every now and then rational discourse is constructive. And if we're tempering unwarranted public judgment along the way, it's all good.

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