Science And Being

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, a blog devoted to diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve got a number of works going on here and tonight, I’d like to really start looking at the relationship between science and religion. Now I am not looking at this as a scientist. I state that upfront. I do not doubt that the scientists know more about this field insofar as it’s science. When it comes to the overbranching topic of metaphysics in relation to science, that is where I will be speaking.

We went through a series recently on the question of God in the Summa Theologica and saw how much depends on Aquinas’s doctrine of existence, of being. For Aquinas, theology is the highest science because it studies the supreme being. Philosophy would be next because it gives the tools that are used in the study of the supreme being, which is why it was often referred to as the handmaiden of theology. Last would be the natural sciences since that studies material being.

Is this to lower matter? Not at all. It’s to say that there is a chain of being. God is being without limitations and so God is the supreme object of study. Next comes topics like ideas. This refers to the form of things. For Aristotle, the forms dwell in the objects, but the forms still refer to unchanging realities. That is the essence of a thing. Philosophy studies non-material objects that can depend on material realities for their expression.

In looking at science, we must realize that the sciences study a kind of being in each case. Physics studies material being in motion. Biology studies living material being. Astronomy studies material being in the heavens. Zoology studies animal material being. We could go on and on.

This is also why some questions fall out of the domain of the sciences. Now they can be used in the sciences or the sciences can give some information about them or they can give some information about the sciences or some combination thereof, but they are not inlcuded in the subject of science as part of the study.

For instance, what is 2 + 2? You don’t use the sciences to study that. You use math. Now you could consider math a kind of science, and that’s fine, but when I’m saying science in this blog series, unless stated otherwise, I’m thinking of sciences that study the material world as such.

The same applies to history. If I want to answer the question “Did Jesus rise from the dead?” science is not the way to do it. I have to use the historical method. Of course, someone might say, “Science demonstrates that men don’t come back from the dead.” That’s another argument for another day, but I’ll say at this point that it does no such thing. It demonstrates that men don’t naturally come back from the dead and that has never been a point of contention.

This has just been a preliminary. My goal is also not to speak of particular scientific findings as true or false per se. I leave that largely up to my readers to make their own decision. That will also apply to the evolution question. For the sake of argument, I’d be willing to grant to all my opponents that macroevolution is a fact. Of course, I don’t grant naturalistic evolution which is evolution without God. That will get to the topic of inferences, another topic for another day.

So let’s see where the road takes us.

Logical Fallacies: Accident

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’m going to take another look at a logical fallacy tonight and it will be the fallacy of accident. No. It doesn’t mean just making a mistake in your reasoning, though you shouldn’t do that.

We all make generalizations at times. I’m not saying that’s wrong. I don’t really know much of a way that we can avoid it. The problem with the fallacy of accident is that it takes a general statement and treats it as if there could be no exceptions whatsoever to that statement.

A good example of this in biblical studies is the book of Proverbs. We all know of people who have said that the book of Proverbs says X, and they did X, but it did not happen. For instance, not everyone who does good has a long life. Proverbs however are not meant to be ironclad statements of reality that always follows. They are general principles that tend to lead to a desired result. Chances are, if you live life the way you ought to, you will live a longer life.

This is often the case with moral dilemmas. What do you do about the Nazis who come to your door and ask you if you have any Jews? Generally, we would agree that you should tell people the truth. However, this is a case where I would argue that the Nazis do not deserve the truth and it is justified to lie to them. You could lie to them while still believing in the ninth commandment since you realize a valid exception to the rules.

This is another one that skeptics also have a problem with, especially when it comes to miracles. We are told that the laws of nature have no exceptions whatsoever to them. If that is the case, then there can be no miracles. We’ve seen hundreds of cases after all where people die and they stay dead. Why should we believe that a miracle has taken place?

The Christian arguing for the resurrection however is not arguing against the principle that dead people come back to life by natural means. That would be pretty silly. They in fact agree with the principle. If they did not, it would not make a resurrection so incredible. It would be a case of “Well yeah. That guy came back from the dead. It happens every now and then. So what?” Death itself has to be a constant reality for the resurrection to be considered a miracle.

What the Christian is saying that all things being equal, dead people do stay dead, but in the case of Jesus, things are not equal. There is an outside agent interfering that brings about the resurrection. You don’t have to start with the outside agent, namely God. You can argue that Jesus was raised and then from that point determine that there must have been an outside agent and then establish the identity of said agent.

The one claiming there are no exceptions to dead people staying dead is making an a priori judgment. It could be the case that no miracles have occurred, but it is hardly fair to the evidence to assume this prior and then look back and when you see what could be an event that is miraculous, throw it out ad hoc.

Be wary of generalizations. They are not always absolute rules.

On Devotion

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Our look at romance in America has been interesting. For those who are reading this at the blog, I invite you to come to Deeper Waters at TheologyWeb where a discussion is going on around this topic. Tonight, I’d like to look at devotion, and that would be devotion in marriage.

One major prayer I pray for my relationship with my wife is to be more devoted every day to her well-being. A month or two ago, I had some Mormons visit us and during the conversation, we talked about covenants and promises. Whenever this came up, I’d indicate my ring and let them know that I take promises very seriously.

Saying “I do” is a huge promise. Incidentally, whenever you become a Christian, it is essentially what you are saying to Christ. The call to believe in Christ is really a marriage call. Of course, we must be careful to not read in to the text modern ideas of marriage. The Bible has nothing in mind of many young single women who say they’re in love with Jesus and that Jesus is their husband. (I mention the women since it would be a bit awkward for the men to call Jesus their husband)

These ideas can often be based on emotional highs. Some people are more wired that way. I just want to make sure such people also have those emotions grounded on a firm reality. Our faith does not need to be a shallow faith and while it is good to have zeal, remember that Paul said we need zeal according to knowledge. Christianity is not meant to be just a high for people.

The rest of us who aren’t like that do differ in our Christian walk. For instance, I saw an atheist recently say the reason I was posting on an atheist blog in argument was because I’m on a mission to let others have the peace and joy of salvation that I have. Well, if you’re talking about an emotional experience, no. I do not have strong emotions over my salvation. If you’re talking about an internal awareness that I am at peace with God and He loves me, then yes.

We must remember in our Christian walk as well that it is not our choice to serve God. It is our duty. We are to do this and that is irrespective of our mood. I recall in the past, and I’m sure there will be some in the future, days when I would get up in the morning and I would be angry with my God on how my life was going, but I would get on the computer and serve Him anyway. My service was required of me regardless of my feelings at the time.

Why not in our marriages as well?

Now I’m largely going to be speaking to the men, though sometimes to the women as well, but I hope the women will pay attention to what I say and draw the necessary parallels.

We men can often once we get married fail to keep chasing our bride. It is easy to take them for granted at that point. While in the past, we’d make every move we could to sweep our brides off our feet, there are some marriages where I fear that that goal has gone away. The bride has been caught. Now we can relax.

Instead, make it a point to romance your wife every day. I often tell people that my wife has made me a master of one-handed driving. When we’re driving down the road, I have a hand on the wheel, but my other hand is locked in hers and hers in mine. It’s a great bonding experience when driving. Every now and then, I’ll have to move away to check directions on my phone, but when done, it’s back to normal.

Of course, before we even get in the car, I will open the car door for her and get her in. Even if someone else is driving the car, I do this anyway. When we get to our destination, I do the same thing. I recently was visiting some friends of mine and as I was leaving, their parents were leaving after me. I saw their Dad do this and I was quite impressed.

Be willing to take the lower place for your wife if need be. Right now, my wife is sick, and I ask your prayers for her recovery. Because she could still give the sickness to me, our doctor suggested we might avoid the same bed for the time being. Therefore, I am taking the position of sleeping on the couch. She wasn’t too keen on this for awhile, but I did state that it was a man thing. As a man, I just can’t make my wife sleep on a couch while I get a bed.

Remember that also women. Always let your men be men.

There have been times when something has happened that it would be easy to get angry over. Before getting angry, ask yourself what it would accomplish. Is your wife feeling guilty enough over this behavior already? Don’t make it worse then. You can express disappointment at something, but that’s no reason to get angry. Let it go. Give her the love you can rather than say something you can’t ever take back. I can gladly say that having it be 13 weeks today, my wife and I have yet to have an argument or fight. Disagreements? Yes. Arguments? No. When we have a disagreement, we sit down quietly and talk things out.

Men. Be ready first also to look for deficiencies in yourself. C.S. Lewis said that we’re all hard to live with, and he was right. Before you begin to think critically of your spouse, I recommend you look and see if it could be a deficit in you first that needs to be dealt with. What is your attitude to what is going on? Why is it that way? Could it be you that has the problem?

Ironically, one experience I had I described in a sermon I gave at my church on holiness and marriage. I spoke on how on a recent night, I had been upset internally with my wife over something thinking I was in the right. At night after going to bed, I was awake still analyzing the situation and then realized I was in the wrong and she was right. When she woke up for a bit that night, I told her what I’d found out in my pondering and asked her forgiveness admitting I was sorry for it all. She gave it, although she still says she was wanting to get back to sleep as well. What I told the congregation was that I wanted to be sure I had peace with my wife before going to bed that night.

What I didn’t tell them, was it was that very night before that that had happened.

If you must get angry about something however, find something substantial. Right now, the new atheists are wanting to destroy religion. Get angry and then get educated so you can deal with them. Muslims are wanting to build a mosque at 9/11. Homosexual activists are wanting to totally redefine marriage.

Or heck, be real gutsy. Look in the mirror and get angry at your own sins for a change.

Be willing to help your wife out. Fellow men. It won’t kill you to do some housework. Be there to help your wife with the laundry and the dishes. In fact, I’d recommend learning some about cooking so you could cook something special for her every now and then. (I’m still working on that, although we did cook pizza together tonight)

Make sure when you do this, you’re not doing it for ulterior motives either. We all know what we men want of course, but that is also your wife’s choice and that choice is to be honored. The reason you are to do housework or bring home a gift or anything of that sort is because you love your wife and you want to show her how much she means to you.

Make sure you’re giving her what she wants also. Women. For you, I can stress that a husband can like a clean home and a good meal, but because those are fixed, he’s not going to be celebrating entirely. He’ll be appreciative, but if you are a housewife, it is also what he is used to seeing when he gets home every day. Do something special for him that is what he’d want and not what you’d want. Fix a romantic dinner. Get a movie that he’ll like. Put on a really nice outfit that you know he’ll really enjoy.

We men need to do the same. My wife and I were recently at the apologetics conference. It might surprise some of you, but my wife is not really into apologetics. However, she does support her husband in this field and wants him to be the best that he can be. Thus, she was willing to go with me and join me. If I’m traveling for ministry purposes and she’s available, she’d want to go as well to join and support me.

On the other hand, my wife loves anime and so if I wanted to do likewise with her, then we’d be on our way to an anime convention. Now there are some things there that I think I’d enjoy, but overall, that convention would be for her. What is important, or should be important to me, is that she is enjoying herself.

Also, pray and read Scripture. This is a nightly ritual for my wife and I. We end our nights with Scripture and prayer. One question we ask each other before going to bed is “How may I pray for you tonight?” It is not much of a shock to each of us that our prayers are consistently about how we want to be better for one another.

Remember every day to get up and love your wife. For me, it is my joy to get to take care of the woman I’ve chosen to pledge my life to. As I believe I’ve said, my in-laws know that while I am using calm and peaceable, if anyone ever dared to harm my wife, they would find a fierce side of me that they weren’t expecting.

Devotion takes work also, but it’s worth it. Talk to married men and women and learn from them. Read good books on the topic. If you were wanting to do well in school, you’d read material for the course and learn the topic. Why is it that we don’t do the same when it comes to marriage? Some aspects can come naturally, but some do take work.

And I close with what someone recently said at a marriage talk we attended together, the best way to be a better husband or wife is to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ.

Holiness will always improve your marriage.

On Lust

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Tonight, we’re going to continue what I was discussing a bit about dating yesterday with a look at lust.

Part of this comes from reading an atheist giving a testimony of what he struggled with growing up in church. For him, it was anathema to think about sex. He was told not to do it. We all know what happens. It’s the same thing that would happen if I told you not to think about a pink elephant for five minutes.

Honestly, I resonate with a story like this. I can understand it. I grew up somewhat legalistic. I was very sheltered. I still have a highly sensitive conscience. It is good to be moral, but sometimes we can overdo things. The intention of the Pharisees was good, but they overdid it.

The church has not been good with its attitude towards sex. All we’ve told young people numerous times is “Do not! Do not! Do not!” Now I believe the “do nots” are important. However, what is important is also why we observe the “do nots” as well as giving some “dos.”

Also, we need to watch how this is being presented. At a church I once attended, we had an event called the Silver Ring Thing. I kid you not. The pastor who spoke was boring me to no end. It is a shame if you can speak about the topic of sex and end up having your congregation be bored.

What was also ironic was he was giving reasons for not having sex before marriage. He was saying the reasons for having sex would be selfish reasons, and I agree. He did say in contrast to “Think of what you would say to your future spouse” or “You could get pregnant” or “You could get a disease.”

Maybe it was just me, but those were also selfish reasons to me also.

Nothing about what the nature of sexuality is. Nothing about what the nature of marriage is. There was no theological content to it. Instead, there was only applicational content. I’m not against application, but application needs to rest on something stronger and this atheist was obviously just given application without a background of sexual thought.

So let’s talk about lust then. First off, it is not “thinking about sex.” On the contrary, I think young people should be thinking about sex. God created it and it is something that falls into Philippians 4:8. I think my single friends should look forward to making love to their future spouse.

Second, it is also not admiration. You should have the right to admire someone of the opposite sex who is attractive. If the problem of lust is admiration, then you’d better never go on a date because I guarantee you you will be admiring that person who is sitting across from you. (By the way guys, don’t make a movie the first date. With a movie, you stare at the screen and don’t interact. Get a date where you interact. My wife and I went to an aquarium on our first date for instance)

Third, that person was also made beautiful for a reason. God made the aspects of the human body to be desired and to be appreciated. Go read the Song of Songs some time and look at how the body is emphasized. I get tired of Christians saying it’s an allegory. You could find some parallels with Christ and the church of course, but could it be the main reason for this was to celebrate the joy of marriage and the beauty of sexuality? Would it be that hard to read that in the text?

Of course, some of you are thinking I am giving a free pass. I’m saying anything goes in your thought life, and I’m not. I see lust as excessive desire. This is desire that cannot contain itself. When you start objectifying that person and treating them as just an object, you are guilty of lust.

This is also the problem with pornography. Pornography tells you to view women as simply objects of desire. (The reverse for women who struggle with porn of course) I would remind men that that girl in that picture is someone’s daughter. That is someone special. For Christians, that is someone who bears the image of God.

Porn is wrong because it treats a human being as just an object. Now to an extent, we do utilize human beings at times. If you bought something at a store today, you had to have a human being likely check you out. Still, that human being was serving a functional role, but if you treated them as just that role, you’d demean them.

Well guys, if you want to show a girl you’re devoted to her and she can trust you with herself, that’s a great way to do that. It’s called marriage. I would like you women to think about the alternative. Picture a man saying to you “Dearest. I love you. I want you to take all your clothes off for me, make yourself entirely vulnerable to me, and let me enjoy you. I just don’t think I want to make a lifelong commitment to you.”

No Romeo would say that with their lips, but several do with their actions.

To those who think they’re struggling with lust, I would say, lighten up. God gave you hormones for a reason. It doesn’t mean you have to get married and you’re under no obligation to get married. If you really want this gift of sex however, then the Bible only has one option for you. Marriage. It’s also a great option. (90 days today!)

If you really need someone to talk to, find a good group of guys that you can talk to about sex. Make them Christian men of course. Having others share your struggle is excellent. If you are struggling with porn, I have been told that the ministry of xxxchurch.com is one of the best you can go to.

Also, really think about sex. Don’t just think about “doing it”, but what it really is. What is the meaning behind this action? Why is it the way it is? What can this tell you about God? Yes. Sex can tell you about God. An excellent look on this can be found at www.peterkreeft.com with his talk of “Is There Sex In Heaven?” (I confess to listening to that one more than once.)

And if you’re a Christian and really struggling, remember the grace of God is there. It’s a battle, but he can help you overcome sexual addictions.

Above all, remember to honor people of the opposite sex in your life. Do that, and you will not lust after them, but rather desire them appropriately and love them.

We shall continue tomorrow.

The Dating Subculture

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Tonight, I’d like to write something for a friend of mine who seems to have had some bad luck in the area of romance lately and as I discussed this with him, he asked me to write some problems on how our American culture approaches this.

One of the first things we noted together is that we place emphasis on feelings way too much. Feelings come and feelings go. For me and my wife, my main attribute that I have for her is devotion. That doesn’t deny feelings and those can be powerful when they come. Right now, she’s not feeling well and I have to keep my distance for my own health, but we had a moment where we did get close enough to stare into one another’s eyes. It was quite a touching moment.

When I talk to my in-laws, I can do nothing but express my devotion to their daughter over and over. They’ve said that usually I’m mild and easy-going, but if someone was to come after her in some way, that this Crouching Tiger would quickly turn into a Hidden Dragon.

It’s the truth. When I’m with her, I’m guarding her like a hawk and making sure no one mistreats her. The only disagreement we ever really have that we can’t resolve is the one about if we are in a dangerous situation, who will be the one to get hurt for who. Neither one of us wants to see the other get hurt at all.

What I’ve learned is best summed up in what a counselor friend told me. Emotions follow motions. Why should this be a surprise? We do it in our Christian walk every day. We don’t feel like doing something that we know Scripture commands us to do but once we do it, we end up feeling pretty good about things. The example he has given is working out at the gym. Getting the motivation to get there is hard, but once you get there, it’s easy.

When I am in class, I will often think back to how I want to go home and see my wife and I call her during the class break. As it stands, she’s sick right now and being a man to respect her as she doesn’t want me to get it and the doctor even approved of this, I’m sleeping on the couch for the time being. It was hard last night because my main desire was that I wanted to be with my wife.

Don’t look to your feelings first then. Instead, look to reality. The question I ask of my wife is if she helps me grow in personal holiness and if I help her do the same. I think others would say I do that for her and I do not want to be the one who comes and says this of her, though she would definitely say it.

For her with me however, my desire has greatly increased to be holy. I have seen ways of thinking in myself that need to change. As I was driving today, I had a green light and as I was going across, I had someone pull right out in front of me in my lane. Bothered a bit? Yeah. I wasn’t angry however. The old me before my wife came along would have been angry and I’d have been ranting about it the rest of the day.

I used to worry a lot more about my apologetics as well. I believe that is because in the past, that was where I got most of my validation and I could not accept an error then. Now, I get my validation as well from my wife and because of that, if I make a mistake in this field, I make a mistake.

Even after my bachelor party as I was walking with some friends back to our cars, I told them “Guys. Work on personal holiness now.” Just a few weeks ago at my church, I did a sermon on marriage and holiness. I emphasized how we need to return to the idea of holiness and what it means and maybe marriage will become a respectable institution again. Friends. If the world is clamoring for homosexual marriage now, that’s our fault. We dropped the ball on marriage and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

My own pastor after the wedding met with my wife and I to tell me how I’d changed since meeting her, something he’d been reluctant to share. He wanted to wait until the time. He told me I was more other-focused than I’d ever been before. I wasn’t spending time in my own world.

In fact, a friend of mine who attends church with me and happened to be my best man told me that the day after our wedding, a Sunday, my pastor referred to me in the sermon. My pastor had offered to pray with me at the wedding ten minutes before I walked down the aisle and asked how he could pray for me. My prayer was that I wanted to be more holy.

I don’t say this to lift up myself. I say this to lift up my wife. I say this to show the effect that she has had on me.

Also, love every day is a choice and that choice gets easier as time goes on. I make it a point with my wife for instance to not get angry. There are times she’s done things that she’d say I could have justifiably got angry with her over. I just pause and realize that wouldn’t do any good. She’s beating herself up enough. I’m not going to add to it. That doesn’t mean I can’t get firm at times. This isn’t done in hate or anger though. I will sometimes just tell her the way things are and that’s for her good. I always end by affirming my love for her and begin the same way. If I don’t, I at least hope I do.

I can even remember one time when my wife and I had an event and it doesn’t need to be said what it was, but I was upset and hurt and wondering why my wife could think the way she did. How could she not agree with my reasoning? It was around 10 at night that I was in bed going over this while she was asleep and then realized what we all knew I would.

I was wrong. She was right.

I do not kid you in saying that I stayed up until midnight until she woke up as I had been pacing around looking for some wisdom on the topic to deal with until I could talk to her. When she woke up, I talked to her and told her how I saw things anew and apologized and asked her forgiveness. She gave it, although she does say she probably just wanted to go back to sleep. When I gave my sermon on holiness, I referred to that and said that it was a recent night that that happened.

The reality was, it was the very night before that that had happened.

Love is a choice and anger is a choice. Disagreements will come, and how you handle them determines everything. My wife and I are still devoted to prayer and Scripture, though we haven’t been able to as much since she’s been sick lately. (And please people, do pray for my wife’s recovery)

Our culture instead thinks too much on what the other person can do for me. We should instead be thinking about what we can do for the other person. When we look at ourselves too much, we will become more prideful. I make it a point to look to my wife and before I could criticize on anything, I would want to see if the deficiency lies with me first. Is this a lack of holiness on my part? I will give her the benefit of the doubt, something a friend of mine noted. He said that whatever she does, I will bend over backwards to try to understand where she’s coming from.

I would say I am more devoted now to my wife than I ever have been before and ten years from now, I will look back and think “Psssh! I thought I was devoted then?! That can’t compare to now!”

Our dating culture I believe will work best when we stop looking for the truth of a good relationship within ourselves and look for it from the outside. By all means, seek the counsel of wise Christians, which I did. I talked to a number of people before I proposed to my wife, and some of them had a very hard time keeping it a secret. I also had good friends, like my best man, who knew where this was going very early on and the advice of several who saw this was and is a match made in Heaven.

My wife helps me grow as an apologist, as a man, and most importantly, as a disciple of Jesus Christ. To her, I am grateful and I give my love.

Am I Assuming Materialism?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I’m going to take the time now to respond to Hamby who responded to my review of his article on determinism. Let’s take a look at the comment that he left.

Thanks for taking the time to dig deeply into this article. It seems that your primary objection to my position is that I have presumed materialism and therefore ruled out the possibility that sentience is “immaterial.”

On the contrary, I believe I made it clear that that is not my problem. For instance, consider this paragraph I wrote:

Hamby starts from a materialistic basis. Now I’m not going to fault him for not supplying the reason for that basis. At this blog, I obviously can’t go into a basis for theism every time. It is understood that I am arguing from a theistic perspective and I hope most realize that if need be, I can give a basis for that perspective.

Later I said this:

I want to stress something at the start. If materialism is true, I agree entirely with what Hamby has said. If there is no God and matter is all we have, I hold that there is no free will.

My problem was not that Hamby assumed materialism. My problem is that I don’t think materialism can explain free-will. Note that I stated that there was no way that this could be known even if it was true. I also stated that I believe a person at a restaurant is responding to information transmitted through sound waves rather than through just sound waves and information is immaterial. I also had an ethical problem with the position he gave on sexual matters and how I believe his view lowers us to the level of animals. (Note: I realize we are rational animals, but even Aristotle made a distinction between man and beast.)

Hamby goes on to say:

Rather than type out a long rendition of what others have already said, I’ll point you to another post which points out the problems with assuming immateriality.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/039supernatural039_and_039immaterial039_are_broken_concepts

If I disapprove of assuming materialism, why would I approve of assuming immaterialism? In fact, I believe both sides in a debate have to make their case if they are arguing for something. My inability to prove theism would not prove atheism. Hamby’s inability to prove atheism would not prove theism.

Nevertheless, Hamby has given something to work with and if he wants to work further, I suggest he come to TheologyWeb. Naturally, I’m not going to go point by point through what he’s written, but I plan on hitting highlights.

Terms like “supernatural” or “immaterial” are broken concepts: They are attempts at reference that cannot actually refer to anything. They are broken terms because they are defined solely in the negative (according to what they are not) without any universe of discourse (anything left over for them to be). As Deludedgod states (see link to his page at bottom) these terms are eliminative negative terms, which can only denote an empty set, meaning that any further talk using these terms is incoherent.

This is simply logical positivism that tries to win by definition. The oddity is that this was dealt with centuries ago. We think best according to our mode of being, and our mode of being is physical so our thinking makes it difficult to think beyond the idea of matter.

In fact, the great philosophers have known for centuries what is meant by this term even if they couldn’t picture it. We still do this. What do you think of with the number 2 or with the laws of logic?

In good Thomistic thinking, which comes from Aristotle, we know what being itself is by removing all limitations from it. This would include the idea of matter and also the idea of limits, which should not be a problem since mathematicians today talk about the concept of the infinite.

The idea is that there is nothing left over for them to be according to Hamby. Why should I believe that? If I can think of concepts that are immaterial and I believe I exist, even if I don’t understand how that works, that is a limitation on my knowledge. It is not a limitation on reality and we do not limit reality to our knowledge.

Hamby goes on to say this:

So the problem isn’t just that terms like ‘immateriality’ and ‘supernatural’ are solely negative definitions, it is that they rule out any universe of discourse. There’s literally nothing left over for these terms to refer to, so there’s nothing left over for them to be. The terms are therefore meaningless, incoherent.

Why should I believe these terms are meaningless? I describe immateriality as being that is not bound by matter. I describe supernatural as being that is not confined to the natural world. I do have to start with my frame of reference and I am limited by it, but that’s not reason why I should assume reality conforms to it.

Hamby goes on to say this:

we may use the terms, and we may even feel that they ‘make sense’, but in reality the only way we can actually have them make sense is if we unconsciously steal from the concept of naturalism. And if you stop and think about it, this is what we do: we end up thinking of ‘immateriality’ in terms of materiality (i.e. energy), or ‘supernaturalism’ in terms of nature (something we can feel, see, hear, etc.).

What’s ironic is that this is also what Aquinas said long ago. In speaking in Question 3, article 3, and the first reply in the Summa, we read the following:

We can speak of simple things only as though they were like the composite things from which we derive our knowledge. Therefore in speaking of God, we use concrete nouns to signify His subsistence, because with us only those things subsist which are composite; and we use abstract nouns to signify His simplicity. In saying therefore that Godhead, or life, or the like are in God, we indicate the composite way in which our intellect understands, but not that there is any composition in God.

This is simply the way we think and the goal is not to conform reality to our thinking but our thinking to reality.

Hamby goes on to say this:

Counter argument: “Supernatural” simply means “beyond what is natural.” There is nothing in that definition per se which means that there is no grounds for believing it.”

My Response: Unless you can show me how saying ‘beyond natural’ differs from saying ‘not natural’, you’ve given me a distinction without a difference.

Yes. I don’t see a difference that matters, but I’ve yet to be convinced that the concept is meaningless.

And later:

Counter Argument: “To support your claim, one must introduce an additional supposition — namely, that the physical universe (nature) is all that exists. This supposition is unproven and unsubstantiated.”

Response: No such supposition is required. Materialism does not rule out your view a priori – your own definition rules out providing any ontology a priori!. You are claiming that there is something beyond materialism, something transcendent, etc. Seeing as your definition rules out any possible positive terms, the burden is therefore on you to present ‘another way’, contra materialism, to render your definitions coherent. If you want to hold that the term ‘immateriality’ or ‘supernatural’ make any sense, you must provide either an ontology or a universe of discourse. If you cannot do this, if all you have is a negative definition, without any universe of discourse, then you must concede that your terms are stripped of any actual meaning… you must concede that your terms can only point to ‘nothing’. This is a problem of your own making: ergo your attempt to blame your opponent is just a sign of the weakness of your position.

Which is again logical positivism to which I have to say that Hamby is behind the times. Logical positivism could not stand up under its own criteria.

Also he says:

We can use the word ‘nature’ to denote different senses, but, the ‘two senses’ of the term are necessarily inter-related. To have a nature is to be a part of nature. The very point under discussion is whether we can talk of having a nature, sans materialism!

To say to have a nature is to be part of nature is just not accurate. I can speak of angelic nature without seeing it as part of the material world. This is again assuming the position of logical positivism and saying that things must be defined the way a materialist accepts. I’m under no such obligation.

My basic question to Hamby would be to have him explain existence itself to me. What is necessary existence. What are its properties? What does it mean to be and is there anything that is without limitation?

Throughout the rest of this, I simply see logical positivism being argued.

Hamby is free to come to TheologyWeb to deal with this there.

I conclude saying that immaterialism is never assumed by me. It is something I argue. We both have burdens. I prefer to not rule my opponent out by definition.

Logical Fallacies: Accent

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I’d like to start tonight a look at the topic of logic, and mainly of logical fallacies. These are fallacies that can often take place in debate. Normally, when we do debates, we don’t come out listing premises and conclusions, even if we have these in our minds. Thus, formal logic will be looked at later. For now, we’re going to look at some informal fallacies that anyone can catch.

A caveat needs to be made at the start. Because a fallacy is used, it doesn’t mean the conclusion reached is automatically wrong. It just means that there is not a good idea given to hold to that view. For instance, if I said “I believe in God because most of the world believes in God so it must be true”, that would be the ad populum fallacy. Now it could be the case, as it is, that God exists, but that is not a valid reason in itself. (I would accept it as evidence however though not an airtight conclusion) Consider also if someone said “I don’t believe in God because Hollywood Celebrity X doesn’t believe in God.” Now it could be, which it isn’t, that God doesn’t exist, but that is not a good reason for disbelieving in God’s existence. As Christians, we want not only good conclusions, but also reaching good conclusions by good means.

I plan to go through a list alphabetically of these fallacies. For all interested, if you have an IPhone or IPad, you can get an application called “Cheatsheet” for a relatively low price that contains each of these. The first one will be the fallacy of accent.

This one can be harder to detect in the online world unless someone uses something like bold, italics, or capital letters. In speeches however, it’s simple to detect. The fallacy takes place when one word or phrase is given an accent as if to highlight what is meant and even go against what was meant.

Suppose you were being interviewed in a man-on-the street interview during the extensive health-care debate we had here in America and were asked what you thought of the Obama proposal. I will use italics to identify which word I am accenting in each sentence.

“I support good health-care policies for all!”

“I support good health-care policies for all!”

The first statement could make you seem like a strong believer in the Obama policy as you wish to emphasize your support of the bill. The second one by contrast could be seen as a challenge to the bill in which you are saying that you support good health-care policies, but you do not see this policy as good.

A great place to watch for something like this would be in fact, the evening news. When a word is emphasized, just watch and see why it’s emphasized. Now not all emphases are wrong. There is a place for emphasis. The goal is to emphasize where you can to make your meaning as clear as you need it to be. There are times you might want to be ambiguous, but if you want to be as clear as you can, watch what you emphasize.

We shall continue tomorrow.

The Rational Response Squad and Free-Will

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! A very good friend of mine recently linked me to an article written by hambydammit at the Rational Response Squad. I will be referring to the writer of the article as Hamby from now on. His post was “Free Will: Why We Don’t Have it, And Why That’s A Good Thing.” For all who want to make sure I represent Hamby’s views fairly, the link can be found here.

Hamby starts from a materialistic basis. Now I’m not going to fault him for not supplying the reason for that basis. At this blog, I obviously can’t go into a basis for theism every time. It is understood that I am arguing from a theistic perspective and I hope most realize that if need be, I can give a basis for that perspective.

Hamby’s argument is essentially that everything is matter in motion and that objects will not violate the laws of motion. Matter will move as it is predetermined to and that will include everything else that is taken along for the ride. This means that your brain is responding as it should under each circumstance due to the laws of matter at work. Now I do have some objections to this all, but I want to stress something at the start. If materialism is true, I agree entirely with what Hamby has said. If there is no God and matter is all we have, I hold that there is no free will.

This doesn’t mean that if there is a God however, that we have free-will. It could be some hyper-Calvinists are right. Of course, I have an objection to Hamby’s view however and one that I think the hyper-Calvinists can avoid for reasons given when I get there. I just want to say at the start that I think Hamby’s conclusion follows naturally from what he has said.

Now it’s time to raise some questions.

For instance, Hamby at one point says this:

At some point, though, we’re going to have to address the philosophical leap that comes with the existence of what we call “sentience.” For our purposes, it won’t matter precisely what sentience is, but it is important to note something of critical importance. Whatever sentience is, it is that way because there are genes within the sentient animal which, according to the law survival of the stable, caused chemicals to interact in completely predictable ways to “build” a being capable of sentient thought.

At this point I was thoroughly stunned. It doesn’t matter what sentience is, but whatever it is, it has to be material. My problem at this point is that this is an objection someone could raise to his thesis. They would be saying “But we do possess free-will for we have sentience. Sentience is not material.”

Hamby has given a naturalism of the gaps. Whatever the case may be, we can be sure that sentience is possible by naturalistic means. Now it could be the case that that has happened. However, why should I assume that such is the case? Why should it also not really matter what sentience is? For dealing with one of the strongest objections, more should be said.

Hamby goes on to say this about the spirit of the free-will argument:

When I speak of the spirit of the free will argument, I mean this: humans possess consciousness and sentience, which allow us to control ourselves in any way we desire, and to enforce our “will” upon the universe. What I want you to see is that this kind of thinking is backwards, for it assumes something existing independently of the law of survival of the stable. For us to be conscious, impulses must move through neurons in our brain. These impulses exist before consciousness. They must. The inescapable conclusion is that our brains cause us to be conscious.

At this point honestly, I have the impression of a small child making his case saying “They must!” I also wonder about the difficulty of what is being said. “Our brains cause us to be conscious.” Are we something other than our brains? What exactly are we? Before I can decide “Do I have free-will?”, I need to know who and/or what I am.

He goes on to speak about individual choices saying the following:

Let’s think now about what happens when we humans make a choice. Suppose I am at a restaurant, and am offered the choice of chicken or fish. The waiter asks me which one I want. My ears receive the vibrations caused by the waiter’s mouth and vocal cords. Without any external “will” causing it to happen, the vibrations are translated into nerve impulses which travel, completely on their own – because they are obeying the law of survival of the stable – to the part of my brain which, through no conscious will of its own, processes sound. I cannot help but comprehend the waiter, for my brain is doing what it must do. It is sending neural impulses to and from various parts of my brain, all of them unavoidably doing what they must do because they are matter and they are seeking stability.

Once my brain has translated the vibrations into a concept, I cannot help the reality that follows. My brain is now in a state. Either I desire chicken, or I desire fish, or I desire neither. I cannot change this state, for I am matter, and my brain has done what it had to do, and my preference is now a reality in time. I cannot help but move forward in time, and I must act in one the thousands of ways potentially available to me. If you think about it, there are probably hundreds of thousands of things I could do in the next second after entering the state of being aware of my preference.

I will do something in response to the question. Most likely, I will speak, expressing my desire for one or the other. The important question is this: Did I decide to speak, or did I speak because my brain caused me to do so? Here is where the survival of the stable plays its trump card. We really have two choices here. Either my brain caused me to have a preference, and then caused me to speak, or something else caused me to have a preference and then speak.

Hamby says that it cannot be something else for in that case, something else would be acting on matter. Now I agree that if matter is all there is, there is nothing outside of matter to act on that matter. However, my main question is what caused someone to have preference A over preference B? What is there that is genetic that determines that? I will say more on this later.

Hamby’s first objection he deals with is that if there is no free-will, why have laws? I believe Hamby is right when he says that these laws can be the means through which it is registered in us that we ought to behave a certain way. The laws can change attitudes. What I’m wondering about however is why the laws are made in the first place? Why does matter believe matter needs to be a certain way? As Dawkins would say “DNA neither knows nor cares. It just is, and we dance to its music.”

Hamby then goes on to say this:

Another common objection I hear is that scientists cannot prove that humans are not different than the animals. Perhaps we do actually have something that has risen above the level of animal consciousness. Maybe we really are different in kind. Of course, this argument commits the same fallacy as the argument that atheists can’t disprove the existence of God. In all cases, the burden of proof is on the claimant, and anyone who claims that human consciousness is different in kind from any other animal has a brobdingnagian task set for himself. Certainly we can do mental tasks that other animals can’t, and our powers of abstraction and conceptualization are unrivaled, but this is no justification for the statement that we are not completely under the control of our genes, just like every other animal. We must remember that any mental ability we have is the direct result of our genes building us this way. If we have the choice to act in illogical ways, or contrary to the dictates of our nature, it is because it is in our nature to be able to do so!

On the contrary, I think both sides have a burden to prove. If I have an inability to prove theism, that does not prove atheism. If someone has an inability to prove atheism, that does not prove theism. Since Hamby is advocating a case, it is up to him to provide evidence for that case. However, I also agree that if someone wants to raise this objection, they should also have evidence on their side.

Next Hamby says this:

When the previous objections fail, people often say that lack of free will makes life meaningless, since we’re just mindless robots running around doing exactly what our programming tells us to do. This is a good example of finding the nearest pool and taking a belly flop into the deep end. Our programming gives us consciousness, and our consciousness gives us a sense of purpose and meaning. We get up in the morning because we’re programmed to have sleep cycles, but we also get up in the morning because we want to make money at our jobs. We want to make money because we want to have a house and attract a mate and be able to buy status symbols and gadgets to make our lives easier. Purpose comes from living, regardless of what causes us to live.

But if our programming gives us consciousness, and consciousness gives meaning, what does this mean exactly? Is the meaning something outside of us or something entirely within us? We think that such and such is meaningful, because it is in our genes, but is it really meaningful in itself?

Also, could a career criminal not say he is simply acting according to his genes? Why should my genes have authority over his? As soon as one reason is given, a moral standard has been evoked and that will have to be something that is beyond the genes. Otherwise, we’ll just have “might makes right.”

Of course, I see appeals to a moral standard with statements about society getting better and speaking about ideas that Hamby believes are harmful. A favorite was when he mentioned abstinence-only education and how unrealistic it is.

Well it seems my wife and I pulled off abstinence just fine until we were married.

Also, Hamby says that sex is in our nature, but we ought not go out and have orgies every night. That’s not in our nature either! While I agree we are sexual by nature, I would ask Hamby “Why not?” If I am simply an animal, as I believe Hamby is stating, then why not act like an animal? An animal does not have rules for sexual conduct generally. Animals just mate when they’re in heat. Why can’t I do the same?

And if we do have a nature, what is it? What is this nature that we all seem to have? We have different genes no doubt, for if we didn’t, everyone on this planet would be exactly alike. However, we also all seem to call each other human. What is it that we have that makes us human? How can it be something other than our genes if all is dictated by our genes?

However, I wish to ask a more fundamental question.

Suppose that what Hamby has said is entirely true. How does he know that? Could he appeal to reason? I would just say “Your genes are programming you to think that way.” Whatever line of reason he gives, he could not escape that I could just answer with “But you respond that way because your genes program you to.” (Ironic also that in an argument against free-will, it seems a hidden assumption that I should change my mind upon reading this)

Now I don’t believe a hyper-Calvinist is in the same problem since they could at least attempt to point to a reality outside of themselves that says they have no free-will, and that would be God. This doesn’t mean that I agree with them or find the point convincing, but it would be one that could be raised.

My other question however is based on the example of being in a restaurant with a waiter. Am I merely responding to sound waves? Suppose I am at a pizzeria and looking over a menu and ask “What are your specials today?” The waiter pulls out somehow a pair of cymbals and clangs them together. I would not say “Great! I’ll try the pepperoni!”

When the waiter comes and asks “Soup or salad?”, he is using sound waves to communicate of course, but he is conveying information in those sound waves. What is being responded to is not the sound waves themselves for there’s nothing inherent in the sound waves that contains the concept of “Soup or salad?” For example, someone could come up to you and ask that in Chinese and unless you know Chinese, you’re not going to know what to say. On the other hand, someone could say “Soup or Salad?” to someone who doesn’t speak English and they will have no clue what to say either.

What is being responded to is not the sound waves per se but the information of which the sound waves are a medium. Information is immaterial. If it is passed on from one to another, the original does not cease to possess it. He may cease to have the medium that it was presented in, but he can still have the information itself. I could have a written message for me from one friend to another. I could read that message in transit and see the second friend and give them the note. I would lose the note, but I could still have the information of the message in memory.

So if that is correct, the brain is actually responding to something immaterial and thus, we now have something that is not matter acting in some way on something that is not material. It could be that I do not know how this takes place and such a question I leave for those interested in the philosophy of science. However, if information is immaterial and there is a response indicating that the immaterial information was received, then we must accept that somehow the immaterial and the material interact even if we don’t understand the process.

As for realities like sex education, the purpose of society is to produce good men and I do not believe Hamby could give a real basis for that. Of course, he is free to try, but it will need to be a convincing case not based merely on what works, but if something is really good and if there is a way it can be known.

Hamby can’t do this however because he does say morality is subjective in this essay. All the while, he says that murder and rape are empirically bad. No. If it is subjective, murder and rape empirically take place, but they are not empirically bad. That is adding a judgment on them that is beyond science. It is then ethics.

Of course, moral subjectivism is a fun topic to discuss and maybe such can be done soon.

I conclude that Hamby’s case is fine from a materialistic perspective and I wish more materialists would see it to see the logical outworkings of materialism, but I also find problems with it seeing as I find materialism does not have explanatory power as a worldview.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: Conclusion

Hello everyone. It’s good to be back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I had a highly enjoyable time at the Conference and I hope some of you were there. Tonight, we’re going to wrap up our look at Victor Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis.”

My conclusion to this is that this book should be called instead “Stenger: The Failed Philosopher.” Now some of you might be saying “But he’s a scientist! He’s not writing philosophy! False. There is scientific data but the interpretation of that data is working out inferences to the best possible explanation. Now if he’s studying natural causes, then yeah, science is being done. He’s not. He’s talking about realities beyond matter. Now granted, he doesn’t believe those realities exist in actuality, which is his point, but to speak beyond matter is to speak out of his area. He is no longer doing science at that point, but philosophy.

Note this. I am not against science. I am also not against philosophy. However, I believe whichever one we do, we should do well. Our ability in one area does not necessarily lead to skill in another. Atheists often wish theists who are ignorant of science would stay out of the debates on science. I agree entirely. The problem is, as I have said before, that the atheists don’t return the favor. They in fact often speak on Christian theology without any understanding of it.

Do you think this is a baseless assertion? If you do, then simply go to a bookstore and get a book by the new atheists. You don’t even have to purchase it. Just open it up and look in the bibliography. Go through and see how many evangelical scholars you see listed. Contrast this by going to many an evangelical Christian work questioning atheism and see how many non-Christians they cite.

Stenger’s research methods I believe are poor. Now it could be his skill in physics is better, but as a philosopher, I question the very idea of something coming from nothing. The reason for his poor research I believe is that he is dealing with pop Christianity. If atheists think Christians believe things without evidence, we Christians must admit that it could be because several Christians have sadly given that impression.

Unfortunately, this has also led to atheists thinking Christianity is nonsense prima facie. I don’t just mean that they think it’s wrong. They think it’s nonsense. There’s really no content to it that’s worth studying. If you were an intelligent person, you’d just look and realize that it’s nonsense.

Unfortunately for them, this is not the case. I do not believe Islam is true for a second, but at the same time, I also believe that it’s important to study Islam if you want to evangelize Muslims. In fact, one of the strangest religions I know of is Mormonism, but yet, I don’t ignore the arguments of them. I have a number of books here so that when I dialogue with the Mormons, I can get their beliefs right.

The new atheists like Stenger don’t do this. This lets them go after the gullible who sadly could be Christians, Christians who have not been raised well and do not know better. This is also the fault of the Christian church. After all, if we say “Our children are not being raised Christian” who are we going to blame that on? We may not control what goes on in the school system, but we surely have some control over what goes on in our own households.

It also affects atheists who seem to repeat without considering it what the new atheists say. I don’t know how many atheists I’ve met who are skeptical that I’ve read The God Delusion. Why be skeptical? Because if you had, how could your faith survive? Isn’t Dawkins devastating? You just didn’t understand it if you read it.

The problem is I did understand it. I understood it was terrible argumentation, but the atheist has often written this off prima facie. The Christian cannot have a good answer. He just can’t! Why? Because atheism is true! Everything else is just nonsense on its face and so there’s no point in studying it!

In the end, atheism is a position of faith and frankly, the kind of faith Stenger believes in.

And in the end, Stenger is a failed philosopher and his case does not hold.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: Living In The Godless Universe

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Tonight, we’re going to go through the final chapter of Victor Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis” looking at the chapter on living in a godless universe. Don’t expect blogs tomorrow or Saturday night. I’ll be at the National Conference on Christian Apologetics. When I return I plan on a final summary.

How is an atheist like Stenger to live? (I find this interesting. If this is the way we all naturally are, why not just go with the song and just “act naturally”) Well, Stenger thinks apparently that he has to explain how to live. In a sense, he does, since life ultimately will have no meaning. However, let’s see what he says in this chapter.

He early on tells of theories about a God module in the brain or a God gene. My problem with this is that even if such was the case, that says nothing about the truthfulness or falsity of the belief. This also gets into Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism. If evolution gave us the belief in religion to help us survive, then why should we not believe the same now? It is not about true beliefs then. It would be evolution is helping atheists like Stenger survive now, but we have no way of knowing if that belief is true. The only way is to look beyond the brain. Could we have a God module? Sure. I’m open to it. It doesn’t affect God’s existence either way.

He also says that if religion is a naturally evolved trait, we have an argument against God. How? No reason is given. Could it be that if God used evolution, he arranged it so that our brains would work in such a way that we would come to believe in him? If that is the case, could it be the atheists are the ones then with the faulty brains? Evolutionary belief in God could then be an argument against God. Of course, the atheist could counter that our brains are meant to give us true beliefs, but then he is bringing teleology into the picture and where does he get that from?

He goes on to condemn Justice Scalia for the belief that government gets its authority from God saying that Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence was a deist and not a Christian.

And the point is?

Even deists believed that God was a necessary foundation for morality. Jefferson would have agreed with Scalia on that point.

Stenger also says most Americans believe the constitution is a living document that evolves as society evolves and tells us Scalia sees that as a fallacy. He says “For him, the text is fixed in meaning what it always meant.”

Well geez. You know what? That kind of makes sense. Maybe Stenger I should just say the Bible doesn’t mean what you say it means and call it a living document, or could it be you think the meaning of the text is in the text? Maybe a few years from now, I can call your book a living book and say it was written as an argument for theism in that it was a mock atheist apologist work.

Stenger even goes on to say that if slavery which was not forbidden in the Constitution still existed today, Scalia would probably vote against its abolition. This is simply an ad hominem that is entirely tasteless for someone wanting to produce a serious argument.

He finally says that Scalia believes that God rules over a society that must remain unchanged because change implies perfection in the original creation.

I have no idea where he gets this stuff…..

When asking about charitable giving, Stenger says that perhaps religious people who give would just give anyway. “Perhaps.” In other words, “Let’s just hope that that’s true because it fits in with our conceptions of the world even if there is no evidence for it.” When a Christian does that, it’s blind faith. When an atheist does it, it’s good science.

As for meaning, Stenger says that what happens now is what matters. Okay. Why? Why should this block of time be more important than the next? Why should tomorrow matter less than today and why should yesterday also matter yes. This present moment matters. For what? For what purpose?

We are told that Aristotle believed that the life of contemplation was the best because that matches those of the gods. Stenger says he supposes that he wasn’t thinking of the gods in the Iliad.

Well, no. All you have to do is read Aristotle to find he was a monotheist and he got darn close to the Judeo-Christian idea of God. You know Stenger? The one you’ve been railing against?

Stenger also tells us of the advice of Peter Singer of “We can live a meaningful life by working towards goals that are objectively worthwhile.” Who says they are? Why should I believe any goal is objectively worthwhile?

Overall, there really isn’t much that Stenger offers that isn’t simply self-help that could be true for anyone. I as a Christian could agree with much of it. I do think it’s more difficult for an atheist who accepts that as “good” without any basis.

We shall conclude Sunday.