Below is a short response to a rather vitriolic missive from a person who evidently did not appreciate my Thoughts on the Dawkins/Lennox debate.
Dear Kam,
I’m not sure how much of this reply you will get around to reading. Your response does not exactly fill me with assurance that you read the whole of my original article. In that post I already pre-empted most of what you wrote, minus the vitriol. However, I shall treat your remarks as if I had not written anything previously and shall try to deal with your note.
Allow me first to say that I was not born with a Bible in my hand. I was brought up and educated in England where I do not ever recall hearing any explanation of the world apart from evolution and the Big Bang. I have a college education and I assure you that I have heard the other side of the story over and over again. I am either “just stupid” as you seem to think, or I am duped, or I am actually in the right. I’ll let you decide that. Only please make sure your decision is made on the basis of having thought through what you read.
The remark you cite from Lennox is simply a statement of fact. Behind it lies the rather obvious truth that “science” does not have the capacity to pontificate about many important areas of life – morality being a clear instance. Therefore, for one to base everything they believe on science (what is called “scientism”) is for one to adopt an unlivable and incompetent worldview. For example, science can’t tell the scientist whether he should lie about his work or not. This is surely a valid point, and an important one to boot. Why it should steam you up I can’t imagine. You even agree with it yourself.
You say, “science is the pursuit of truth using rigorous (sic) testing, evidence and reason.” And in your penultimate paragraph you add, “you tirelessly defend something that is not based on evidence, cannot be proven, and is clearly false.” I take you to mean that unless something is based upon “rigorous testing, evidence and reason” it is false?
Well, I would say that there is evidence for God everywhere. The trouble is not with a lack of proof; the trouble is with your antagonistic attitude towards it. It is true that some things can be known by testing. That is what the hard sciences are for. But many other things, like beauty, love, morals, numbers, abstract universals, mind, the laws of thought themselves, cannot be known via empirical testing. And the way one employs their reason will determine what they accept as evidence. You will use your reasoning to argue (or assert) from naturalistic premises. I use it to argue from supernaturalistic final causes. You will not accept as evidence anything that threatens your beliefs. On the other hand, what I will accept as evidence will be guided by my Christian theism. What we admit as evidence will depend on what we think exists and does not exist.
Does that mean we are in an irretrievable stand-off? Not at all! You see, the main issue here is not whether you are reasoning and I am believing in pink fairies. The issue is whether you can reason at all if you stick to your false premises. For example, it is all very well saying something like, “we humans already HAVE the ability to choose what is morally acceptable and we do not need the bible (sic) to gain our morals.” It is another thing entirely to prove that morality is anything other than the collective preferences of a certain individual or group without the Bible! Try it. Do you believe that rape or child molestation or ethnic cleansing is wrong absolutely? So do I, but then I have an ultimate standard of right and wrong from Someone who revealed those standards to me to base my ethics on. You, however, only have yourself and those who happen to agree with you. But what if someone disagrees with you? What moral right do you have to tell them that their morality is wrong? It’s no good thinking (as I’m sure you are) that “everyone knows those things are wrong” – the question you are being asked is why? Where does absolute morality come from in your outlook on life? I put it to you that when you are making universal ethical assessments you are using my worldview to do it. If you don’t think so then try to justify them any other way. Remember, “It is just wrong!” is nothing but an opinion without something to give “wrong” a universal meaning.
But it gets worse. You talk about “science,” but science is impossible in your interpretation of things. For starter’s you say, “science is the pursuit of truth using rigorous testing, evidence and reason,” but you talk as if “truth” and “reason” are just there. In the biblical outlook all facts reveal the Creator (even evil things – which are a result of what the Bible calls “sin.”). “Truth” is conformity to God’s character and plan. “Reason” is the mind’s conformity to God’s mind, which is revealed in Scripture.
But you don’t believe in God do you? What then is “truth”? I don’t say that you don’t know some true things. I am inquiring as to the adequacy of your worldview to account for truth! Is truth personal opinion? Is it changing? Is it unknowable? Is it what the people you have faith in tell you it is? If it is any of those things, do you not see that your statement about science being the “pursuit of truth” is sheer nonsense? Truth has to be universal if your statement is to have any significance. But what basis does your view of reality have for universal truth?
Again, you speak of “reason.” Well, I can account for reason and reasoning. And I can account for why my reasoning can correspond with the world outside my brain. What about you? What evidence do you have that you are not predetermined to think and feel the way your internal chemistry dictates that you do? I presume you don’t believe in the soul? I suppose you don’t believe that the mind is different from the physical brain either? What then is reason – the firing of your synapses? Do you believe Dawkins to be rational when he states “Nothing in the mind exists except as neural activity”? – Richard Dawkins, Sunday Telegraph, 1 July 1997. [This is a British newspaper].
If that is true then there is no such thing as “freewill” in any sense (apart from a false impression of freewill produced by ones brain chemistry). Further, there is no such thing as rationality since what person A (say, you) call rational has no more claim to validity than what person B (say, a sociopath) calls rational. There is no basis for reason or morality or science on Dawkins’ worldview.
I believe that the sovereign God of the Bible has created everything, upholds everything by His power, guides everything to its final end – whether to judgment or glory. It is He who has made us in His image. It is He who has given us reason and told us to use it to explore His world (a mandate to do science!). It is He who has placed so much evidence of His existence in the world that you have to want to miss it. And it is He who has sent His beloved Son into the world to die and to take the judgment for both you and I. That is the truth! Stop running from it. Whoever has hurt you or made you mad with God, you will only have any justification for science and reason, or anything else for that matter, when you come to know Him who is the Source of those things.
