Introduction to Analytic Christian Philosophy

Rashad Rehman

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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Scope and Limitations of this Book

PART I: An Introduction to Analytic Christian Phi-losophy

Chapter 1: Alvin Plantinga’s Famous Essay “Advice to Christian Philosophers”

1.1 Alvin Plantinga’s work in the Context of 20th Century Christian Philosophy 1.2 Alvin Plantinga’s “Advice to Christian Philoso-phers” (1984)

Summary

Chapter 2: Natural Theology, Reformed Epistemol-ogy and the Failure of Theological Rationalism

2.1 What is a Natural Theological Argument? 2.2 A Brief Overview of the History of Natural The-ological Arguments 2.3 The Revival of Natural Theology and the Failure of Theological Rationalism 2.4 Other Developments in Natural Theology: Onto-logical, Axiological and the Argument from Reason 2.5 Experiential Knowledge and Propositional Knowledge: A Brief Commentary

Summary

Chapter 3: What difference does God make? The Philosophical Atheists of the Past and Present

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3.1 The Philosophical Atheists of the Past and Pre-sent 3.2 The Christian God Matters

Summary

Chapter 4: Christian Philosophical Projects 4.1 History of Philosophy 4.2 Unifying Sub-Disciplines Within Philosophy 4.3 Modern Philosophical Problems and their Rele-vance to Christian Philosophy 4.4 Science and Christianity: A Quick Word on Mir-acles 4.5 Objections

Summary

Chapter 5: Think Philosophically, Think Catholic

5.1 Catholicism, Philosophy and Living for Christ: Responding to Secularization and Acedia* 5.2 Patrick Sullivan’s “Four Monks Walk into a Pub”, Apologetics and Evangelism: Telling versus Showing

Summary

Conclusion: Why Christian Philosophy Matters To-day

Appendix A: Pedagogy, Reading and Ignorance: Two Essays

Appendix B: How might one argue for theism? Three Essays

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Appendix C: Russell’s Challenge to St. Aquinas

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

*Final copy must have the following: -A massive bibliography. -More of Keener’s work. -Argument from Reason and Plantinga’s EAAN. -Taylor’s work on Secularism and “Acedia” as a “Part II.” (Pascal, JP II, Pieper, Kierkegaard, Snell, Nietzsche, Balthasar, et cetera must be con-sulted). -Work from Popper “The Open Society and Its Enemies”. Goals: Rough: 53,817 words. Final: 70,000 words.

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Introduction

“The present age with its sudden enthusiasms fol-lowed by apathy and indolence is very near the

comic”

-SØren Kierkegaard, The Present Age (1840)

I am not sure how to write this book. Indeed, in be-ginning this project I am not even sure that I am the one most apt to write it. I almost want to critique my work as Nietzsche critiqued his 1872 work The Birth of Tragedy:

“…badly written, ponderous, embarrass-ing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness…”1

Alright, I might be over exaggerating a little. Not-withstanding my doubts about my ability to write this book satisfactorily, I think it is an important book, and one which might be valuable to any Cath-olic2 (and non-Catholic) thinker who is interested in

1 Ref. Birth of Tragedy. Pg. 19. 2 I am writing this book for Christians generally, but with some

focus for Catholics. (I will use ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ almost syn-onymously since much of what I say applies to Christians generally (i.e., Protestant and Catholic alike) and not particularly Catholicism). The focus on Catholicism does not infringe on my arguments or the cogency of my arguments, though, since most references in this book are not to Catholic philosophers, but to Protestant ones (and this is

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studying philosophy for the first time, and who wants to what I shall eventually call “system build” thought. As a particular anecdotal remark, this book can be interpreted as responding to a particular problem, namely, that of ignorance. Ignorance, not in the sense of an insult; rather, ignorance in the same fashion that, for instance, many have misattributed a quote on truth to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and thereafter used it to promote feelings of fish, megadose vitamin C therapy, drug legalization, net-work marketing, acupuncture, supranational government, repressed memory, libertarianism, anti-vaccination and, you guessed it, human cloning.3 Asides this, in many ways more than one the above quote by Kierkegaard sums up many of my motiva-tions. Kierkegaard was an important 20th century Danish philosopher who wrote works which pene-trated the hearts of many asking deep, fundamental, existential questions. While the work I quoted him from was written in 1840, this quote still holds in our own time, I suggest. More than that, it is be-cause the truth of this statement that I want to begin this book in this fashion. Having wondered why Kierkegaard’s statement is all-too-true, I concluded the following: People begin with different axioms (first principles). I begin with the proposition that Catholicism is true, and what follows is morality,

a philosophical and not, loosely speaking, a theological book any-way).

3 Jeffery Shallit’s “Science, Pseudoscience, and The Three Stages of Truth” (2005) https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Pa-pers/stages.pdf. Accessed November 3rd 2016.

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love, meaning et cetera. Many, though, accept some-thing like naturalism, the thesis that all that exists is the natural world and nothing “outside” it, and what follows from that is sheer meaninglessness i.e., any-thing goes.4 So, the Catholic (Christian, that is), must ultimately (i) realize these axioms in contem-porary culture (and their justification) and (ii) know their own axioms. More than that, they must build on these axioms and know why they are true, if they are to have a firm foundation in them.5 Kierkegaard’s quote is a comic truth, a warning, and an important call to action—simultaneously.

Approaching this book is difficult for a couple reasons6: It might be a persons first time ever open-ing a philosophy book, it might be someone who has only ever read classical literature who is opening this book, et cetera. So, I will do my best to make this book as accessible as possible and provide for the reader footnotes to more advanced aspects of the

4 I am arguing as Dostoevsky here Ref. Brothers Karamazov:

“If there is no God, everything is permitted.” 5 I do not espouse ‘foundationalism’, if one is tempted to infer

this—I just think axioms are fundamental in a non-foundationalist sense. Josef Pieper captures this well: “One cannot ask a philosophi-cal question or think philosophically without bringing the whole of being into play, the totality of existing things, “God and the world””. Leisure, pg. 96.

6 As a sort of side note, my intention is not to introduce ‘Chris-tian philosophy’, and while this should be more explicit throughout the text, I will explicitly say it here to avoid confusion. I do not pre-sume to have the ability to do such a thing; rather, I think myself competent enough (hopefully), to write about a particular style of doing Christian philosophy, namely, in the analytic tradition. In other words, my project is specific and thus easier to accomplish.

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book (I am not always sure what is or is not tech-nical, so I will ask for the forgiveness of the reader). Also, the reader might notice something about the quotations I give—many are long and without com-mentary. This is not because I have nothing of my own to say, but because one central purpose of the book is to bring to make clear Christian philosophy and its con-temporary developments. In all honesty, even much of the work I am presenting I am not fully sure I un-derstand (especially when modal logic is mentioned); this, though, is not problematic for my part. Like the reader of this book, I too am learning, and have much to ponder over. While much of what I do men-tion in the book is from my own perspective (or defending that of another), I do have my own in-sights and interpretations to respective thinkers and movements; however, the main goal of the book—if one will take anything away from it—is to introduce Christian philosophy as it is being done in the 21st century, in the analytic tradition7; further than that,

7 I am leaving out what might be called ‘continental Christian

philosophy’ since I really know nothing of it. I suspect that a thor-ough going study of this is both long, strenuous and very rewarding. As an anecdotal note here, as I write this book I am beginning to expand my horizons by exploring the work of Charles Taylor, some-one who might aptly be called a ‘continental Christian philosopher.’ While I am excited about the project, I am, nonetheless, deeply com-mitted to the analytic style and method; however, this is all tentative—and I suspect that as I learn more continental philosophy, I realize that it might be the better method of doing philosophy in general (whereas analytic is better for apologetics, for instance). This book, then, is merely my attempt to share what I know (little as it may be) of the Christian analytic tradition in the latter half of the 20th century and the 21st century—maybe I will write another

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I want to show why this matters and how informing ourselves about this can inform our studies, worldview and conceptual framework by which we go about being in the world.8 I think to rid oneself of these insights is a great deficiency for philosophical studies (especially the Christian doing philosophical studies). Very briefly, though, I will say exactly what I think philosophy is and deals with, and then the reader can use this page as a sort of reference page if ideas get muddled as the book proceeds. There are parts of the book, though, that are do require some understanding of modern debates and discourse. (One might have to skip those parts, or embark to understand them honestly and put the effort in).

Simply put, philosophy is the love of wisdom. It has many sub-disciplines, and here are some: Episte-mology (the theory of knowledge i.e., what do we know?), Metaphysics (the study of the fundamental nature of reality i.e., what is reality ultimately like?), Ethics (the study of good/bad, right/wrong and

on the relationship between the two? Perhaps what is needed is a (i) recognition of the divide and (ii) a way in which both might be em-braced. I suspect this is what Bryan Metcalfe was getting at when he said that he embraced any philosophy which brought about wis-dom—this integrative and wondrous spirit is not often found nor embraced; nonetheless, this attitude I think is important and truth-conducive. I think the two worlds of Christian philosophers have, even though through dim lenses, been coming into contact. See Ref. Tayloring Reformed Epistemology.

8 The idea that we do not have a “conceptual framework” by which we go about the world, but enter into the world and learn through experiencing it, is something I think close to the thought of Charles Taylor. Ref.

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moral obligations i.e., why ought to do x and why?), Logic (the study of reasoning i.e., what are good ar-guments constituted by?) et cetera. Alongside these “core” sub-disciplines, emerge even more interesting areas, typically taking the name “philosophy of” i.e., philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philoso-phy of law, philosophical theology, philosophy of logic (or philosophical logic), philosophy of religion, philosophy of time (and space), philosophy of educa-tion, philosophy of human nature, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science (physics, biology), philosophy of philosophy (meta-philosophy—yes it’s a real thing!), philosophy of mathematics, et cetera. The list is virtually endless. Philosophy concerns it-self with the whole of reality, or at least in trying to think about the world as a whole (and not merely as parts).9 Josef Pieper, I think, noticed what philoso-phy was when he wrote the following: “The act of philosophizing…as well as prayer, springs from shock.”10 It is this sort of shock that we exist and that we exist in the world we do in fact exist in, namely, the actual world.11 Now that it is (hope-fully) at least relatively clear with what philosophy

9 This theme of a “systematic” and “integrative” worldview and

connecting the dots, so to speak, between these parts of philosophy, will be discussed later in the book.

10 Ref. Leisure. Pg. 73. 11 The almost “bafflement” of contingency was put well by C.S

Lewis Ref. God in the Dock. Pg. 27. This notion is also taken seri-ously by, for instance, Martin Heidegger in his 20th century masterpiece Sein und Zeit (year) with his notion of being-in-the-world. Ref. (get bibliographic information after).

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deals with, namely, the big questions, I will now turn to the nature of this book.

The purpose of this book is very simple: Many Catholics (young Catholics, that is) do not know about Christian philosophy. It is for them that I want to write this book.12 I find that, unfortunately, many people who do not study philosophy have a hard time systematizing their worldview and adopt-ing a full and complete picture of the world in which they live. Despite being Catholic, it is hard for many to conceptualize hard questions which demand time and careful attention. It is said, further, that it is even sometimes impossible to really know what per-spective to adopt when it comes to the nitty gritty, difficult questions human life presents us. It is to this end that this book is being written. Alvin Plantinga, the 20th and 21st century analytic philosopher of reli-gion (do not worry about what a ‘analytic philosopher of religion’ is for now), wrote a very fa-mous paper entitled “Advice to Christian Philosophers” (1984) in which he makes (many) fa-mous phrases, delineating what Christian philosophers might and might endeavor to do. It is here that I want to draw the reader’s attention to a central passage in Plantinga’s article:

12 In all fairness, this applies too to Christians who don’t know

about Christian philosophy; but, as I said earlier, what I mean by “Catholic” can equally apply to “Christian” in almost all cases (it is only around the end of the book that it shifts more towards Catholics specifically).

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“So the Christian philosopher has his own topics and projects to think about; and when he thinks about the topics of current concern in the broader philosophical world, he will think about them in his own way, which may be a different way. He may have to reject certain currently fash-ionable assumptions about the philosophic enterprise-he may have to reject widely ac-cepted assumptions as to what are the proper starting points and procedures for philosophical endeavor. And-and this is crucially important- the Christian philoso-pher has a perfect right to the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is inter-esting but fundamentally irrelevant.”13

Notice the phrase “[the Christian philosopher] will think about [topics of current concern] in his own way”, and its importance. Plantinga is here saying that despite there existing a plethora of philosophi-cal questions, the Christian philosopher has the perfect right to her/his presuppositions and further than that, the Christian philosopher does not have to make his or her work in tune with the presupposi-tions of the non-believing or secular community. For

13 Accessed September 18th, 2016: http://www.faithandphilos-

ophy.com/article_advice.php

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many young Catholics, I think this is especially im-portant. It is all to common for a Catholic high school student to have big questions, have no one to answer them, and lose her or his faith. This, while obviously tragic, is even worse when there exists reference to the university. At the university (or at least secular universities), there is scarcely any refer-ence to faith or Catholicism. Indeed, the young Catholic I have described is without much help, phil-osophically speaking (I do not doubt that God could work in this person’s life in other ways—I honestly suspect He does). But let us suppose that this Catho-lic in question does not lose his or her faith; but, instead, has a rich, and full-orbed faith, a real, loving and intense relationship with God. Once this person goes off to university, what then? The first thing this Catholic ought to notice is the fundamental pre-suppositions of the university which are antithetical (more often than not) with Catholic teaching. It is common that moral nihilism takes domination, and that furthermore there really is no room for Catholic (or any religious) thinking at all. This is obviously a problem, and where I think Plantinga gets it right. The Christian philosopher—maybe here this could even mean the Christian who thinks philosophically—ought to notice something: The persons at this secu-lar university have their presuppositions—and this means nothing. Of course people will begin with their axioms (first-principles) i.e., atheism, and derive what follows from that i.e., sexual intercourse before marriage being morally permissible. It is here where the Christian philosopher might have something to

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ask: How, then, am I supposed to unify what the univer-sity teaches and what I myself believe? It is to this question that I want to make one important note: This question is relevant to Christian philosophy and a deeper notion that will become thematic throughout this entire book, namely, the notion of ‘system-building.’ The best philosophers to ever walk on the face of the earth were system builders, that is, persons who built philosophies (or built on their prior philosophical presuppositions) to develop a worldview which took in all the facts, experiences and data, if you will, of human life. Simon Blackburn, himself a philosopher, puts it nicely as he calls doing philosophy ‘conceptual engineering’:

“For just as the engineer studies the struc-ture of material things, so the philosopher studies the structure of thought. Under-standing the structure involves seeing how parts function and how they interconnect. It means knowing what would happen for better or worse if changes were made. This is what we aim at when we investi-gate the structures that shape our view of the world. Our concepts or ideas form the mental housing in which we live. We may end up proud of the structures we have built. Or we may believe that they need dismantling and starting afresh. But first, we have to know what they are.”14

14 Ref. “Think”, in the introduction.

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There is something important to notice here. Philos-ophy is more than abstract thought and “up in the air” thinking; it is a practical, while intrinsically val-uable, attempt to make sense out of the world, and clarify critical notions that we accept i.e., morality. This must be explicitly said, though, that while it is of course true that philosophy is a system building endeavor, it does not mean that one cannot have pre-suppositions (as, for instance, Martin Heidegger thought when he thought Christian philosophy was impossible).15 Contrarily, Christian philosophy be-gins with its own axioms i.e., the resurrection and divinity of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins, God being love, God existing, et cetera, and further work has to be done in clarifying these things. (God cre-ated us to have worthwhile knowledge about Him and ourselves). Here I want to make a couple notes to clarify what I have been talking about. First, just because philosophy as ‘conceptual engineering’ in-volves clarifying issues, philosophy is not the same as clarification itself. Josef Pieper makes this clear in his 1952 work Leisure: The Basis of Culture:

“…to philosophize means to step beyond the sectional, partial environment of the workaday world into a position vis-à-vis de l’universe: a step that takes one into the open, for the heavens are not a roof over a man’s head—though one ought always to

15 Ref. Plantinga’s paper on Augustinian Christian Philosophy

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leave the door open behind one, for a man cannot live like that continuously…”16

While he believes poetry is very likened to philoso-phy as well—closer than science even—he, in another work defines this act of philosophizing alongside what it means to contemplate, pray and basically pass the threshold of this world into the depths of the intrinsic foundations of the world. This he calls an act meaningful in itself:

“Whenever in reflective and receptive con-templation we touch, even remotely, the core of all things, the hidden, ultimate rea-son of the living universe, the divine foundation of all that is, the purest form of all archetypes (the act of perception, im-mersed in contemplation, is the most intensive form of grasping and owning), whenever and wherever we thus behold the very essence of reality—there is an ac-tivity that is meaningful in itself taking place.”17

So, genuine philosophizing is not merely conceptual analysis, but also, in the spirit of “wonder”, as Pieper says, an intrinsically valuable act. Pieper, though, cautions the reader towards the notion of “system-building” as he notes that since our pursuit of wis-dom (the goal of all philosophizing), is to be wise

16 Ref. Leisure pg. 94. 17 Ref. Only the lover sings. Pg. 23.

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like God, “a complete and closed “system” of philoso-phy is not possible.”18

For me, I think this highly unproblematic. I think this is to be expected given our finite cognitive and mental capacities, and our spatio-temporal con-straints (especially our limitation in history). Does this make all philosophizing futile? Not at all. For the spirit of the philosopher is the spirit of wonder—it is the spirit which is attentive to the divine foun-dations of the world and the pursuit of wisdom as God has it. Thus, our system building is an intrinsi-cally valuable endeavor (even though it will always be incomplete). One note on the Ancient Greek phi-losopher Plato, and one more comment on system-building, however.

Given that the “philosophical act”, as Pieper puts it, is intrinsically meaningful, the Christian phi-losopher must see this in light of what one might call “care for the soul.” It is because humans have the capacity to reason and to pursue truth honestly that questions of meaning arise. Plato, the Ancient Greek philosopher, wrote many dialogues in the person of Socrates. While Socrates was a real person, it is diffi-cult to draw the distinction between Plato and Socrates in the dialogue; nonetheless, since truth is independent of the person who utters it (asides God), Plato (or Socrates’) views are important regardless of who gives them. Plato was notorious for defining

18 Ref. Leisure. Pg. 110. C.S Lewis whole-heartedly concurs.

Ref. “God in the Dock” pg. 30.

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philosophy as a pursuit after wisdom and which ulti-mately concerns the “health” of the soul. The Christian philosopher must realize the truth in this: clearly pursuing truth and being careful in his or her beliefs is fundamental, since philosophical questions are often questions of ultimate truth. In his Protago-ras, Socrates warns young Hippocrates about what he is doing to his soul, namely, putting it in jeopardy when he desires to hear Protagoras (a sophist), when he does not even understand what ‘sophistry’ means:

“I went on to my next point: “Do you see what kind of danger you are about to put your soul in? If you had to entrust your body to someone and risk its becoming healthy or ill, you would consider carefully whether you should entrust it or not, and you would confer with your family and friends for days on end. But when it comes to something you value more than your body, namely your soul, and when every-thing concerning whether you do well or ill in your life depends on whether it be-comes worthy or worthless, I don’t see you getting together with your father or brother or a single one of your friends to consider whether or not to entrust your soul to this recently arrived foreigner. No, you hear about him in the evening—right?—and the next morning, here you are, not to talk about whether it’s a good idea to entrust yourself to him or not, but

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ready to spend your own money and your friends’ as well, as if you had thought it all through already and, no matter what, you had to be with Protagoras, a man whom you admit you don’t know and have never conversed with, and whom you call a soph-ist although you obviously have no idea what this sophist is to whom you are about to entrust yourself.”19

It is clear from Socrates’ response that what is valua-ble, really, is the health of the soul. It is in virtue of the importance of philosophical questions that they not be answered superficially and with reference to mere opinion; rather, one must embark on a journey to truth—however long, difficult (or simple?) it might be. So, philosophizing is obviously a worth-while endeavor; if our goal is truth, we must ulti-mately rid ourselves of superficial and harmful notions that are devoid of truth (no matter how like-able and useful they may be) and go wherever our honest search takes us. The Christian philosopher, while claiming to know the Ultimate Truth, has fur-ther philosophical work to do, and can do so keeping in mind this Platonic notion of truth-directedness as a general principle of all genuine philosophizing. Turning to a final point on system-building now.

While system-building for the Christian phi-losopher is detrimental for many reasons i.e., evangelism, apologetics, et cetera, it is important to

19 Plato. Ref. Protagoras. 751 (313a-d).

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recognize an all-too-often problem that results from conceptualization. Over-conceptualization, I think, can run one into problems. What I mean is that to think that all philosophy is mere conceptualization and system-building with no immersion into the realm of being, no relation with “theoria” as Plato put it, one can end up being as the philosopher SØren Kierkegaard puts it:

“In relation to their philosophical systems, most philosophers are like a man who builds an enormous castle, and lives in a shack close by. They do not live by their enormous philosophical systems.”20

It is important to notice here what Kierkegaard is really saying, namely, that if you build a philosophi-cal system, a way to organize and interpret the data of human experience that is true, you ought to live inside it. Just after this passage, Kierkegaard says that the Christian joyfully lives in the “droughty sta-ble” that Christianity provides.21 While this might be more humorous than true (as I think is the case), it is true that Christianity affords a person a Weltan-schauung by which to live, and by which their life might be structured. Christianity is not merely a philosophical system, but a way of life and a way in which one conducts and orients themselves in the world; one which gives framework and content to all meaning, value, purpose, morality and so forth.

20 Ref. Kierkegaard “Daily Readings” pg. 30. 21 Ref. 30.

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So, instead of writing a straight “Introduction to Philosophy”, I want to write the following book as a manual, tool or perhaps a guide for the Christian who wants to thoroughly engage and understand what has been written on in philosophy in the 20th and 21st century and what one might get out of it. One interpretation of the motive of this book follows closely to Plato’s the allegory of the cave:

“’here’s a situation which you can use as an analogy for the human condition—for our education or lack of it. Imagine people liv-ing in a cavernous cell down under the ground; at the far end of the cave, a long way off, there’s an entrance open to the outside world. They’ve been there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up in a way which keeps them in one place and allows them to look only straight ahead, but not to turn their heads. There’s a firelight burning a long way further up the cave behind them, and up the slope be-tween the fire and the prisoners there’s a road, beside which you should imagine a low wall has been built—like the partition which conjurors place between themselves and their audience and above which they show their tricks.’…’Imagine also that there are people on the other side of this wall who are carrying all sorts of artefacts. These artifacts, human statuettes, and ani-mal models carved in stone and wood and

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all kinds of materials stick out over the wall; and as you’d expect, some of the peo-ple talk as they carry these objects along, while others are silent.’…’They’re no dif-ferent from us.’…’I mean, in the first place, do you think they’d see anything of them-selves and one another except the shadows cast by the fire on to the cave wall directly opposite them?’”22

The allegorical interpretation here being modern philosophy and the lack of awareness of what has been going on, namely, “renaissance of Christian philosophy.”23 The Christian philosopher has only to benefit from all the system-building and philosophiz-ing of the past; if one remembers that doing God’s will involves knowing and understanding the reality in which we live appropriately, should God allow us the time and resources to delve into the depths of the human experience, we ought to do so humbly, and with the goal of doing His will, and all it involves. It is to this end that I dedicate this book to the person who has been responsible for so much of my thought, inspiration and love for philosophy (and, more importantly, my love for God), Patrick Sulli-van.

22 Plato. Republic. trans. Robin Waterfield. (Oxford: Oxford

University Press), p.240-241 23 WLC ref. Probably in at least 10 places he said this.

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Rashad Rehman September 2016.

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Chapter 1

Alvin Plantinga’s Famous Essay “Advice to Chris-tian Philosophers”

“God is not “dead” in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.”24

-Quentin Smith (Atheist philosopher)

1.1 Alvin Plantinga’s work in the Context of 20th Century Christian Philosophy

It will be easy to see why I call this paper “fa-mous” as the proceeding paragraphs unfold. But, a little history of philosophy in the 20th century is im-portant to understand here to get an understanding of what exactly was happening when—and before—Alvin Plantinga was writing.

I will put the story, essentially, in narrative form. Around the beginning of the 20th century, logical positivism dominated philosophical thought. Very briefly, this thought ruled out any meaningful talk

24 Ref. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-revolution-in-an-

glo-american-philosophy#ixzz4KpxT0PNd

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about metaphysics (the study of the fundamental na-ture of reality). There was a so-called “verifiability criteria of meaning” and, eventually, a “falsifiability criteria of meaning.” Both of these were eventually rejected (as they both turned out to be self-referen-tially incoherent); however, while these dominated, philosophers and theologians of theistic sorts were in some kind of trouble. If they could not talk about God in any meaningful way, what then? If meta-physics was mere world play, does that mean that all theistic notions i.e., God loves you, is “cognitively meaningless”, as A.J. Ayer25 put it? Some philoso-phers concluded yes, some concluded no. While I am skipping many thinkers and many historical mo-ments, I just want to make clear one simple idea: Theists were in trouble and the gap between Christi-anity and philosophy was widening, and theology was on the verge of being thought of as meaningless. This all changed with the renaissance of Christian philosophy.

1.2 Alvin Plantinga’s “Advice to Christian Philoso-phers” (1984)

William Lane Craig, a philosopher and theologian of the 20th and 21st century, reflects on this change and notes that while Stuart Hackett's book The Resurrec-tion of Theism was published in 1957 and began a natural theological project, it was unnoticed and the

25 Ref. Ayer’s LTL.

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renaissance only began with the appearance of Alvin Plantinga:

“the renaissance in Christian philosophy began with the publication of God and Other Minds by Alvin Plantinga in 1967 when he published this book with Cornell University Press. Hackett's book had ap-peared ten years earlier in 1957 but it was published with Moody Press, and there-fore was never read. And I have said, and I really believe, that if Hackett's book had been published by Cornell University Press instead of Moody Press the renais-sance in Christian philosophy would have begun ten years earlier than it did. But un-fortunately I think Hackett's work went unnoticed and therefore had little effect upon the renaissance of Christian philoso-phy that really began with Plantinga's work ten years later.”26

Thus, historically speaking, the revitalization of Christian philosophy began with Alvin Plantinga and his 1967 work God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God. It is in this work that Plantinga does what can now be called an-alytic philosophy of religion. That is, Plantinga uses the tools of analytic philosophy to work on questions that emerge in the philosophy of religion i.e., does

26 Ref. Craig’s podcast: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/two-

deaths-two-worldviews#ixzz4Kpo1UNx5

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God exist? If so, what is He like? While there are other thinkers around this time who worked on problems of vital importance, Plantinga emerged as a philosopher who was using the aforementioned tools of analytic philosophy i.e., clarity, precision, and applied them to what were at one point “mean-ingless questions.”

While an overview of God and Other Minds would be utterly simplistic—and probably not very rewarding—in such a short amount of space, I want to turn now to Plantinga’s “Advice to Christian Phi-losophers” (written quite awhile after his God and Other Minds) as it contains the seeds of much latter 20th century philosophy of religion and especially 21st century analytic philosophy of religion. As a background to this paper, Plantinga’s insights are staunchly against that of the logical positivistic era who denied the meaningfulness of metaphysical and theological discourse; Plantinga emerges here as a Christian figure who changed the face of philoso-phy—more notably Christian philosophy—arguing that while Christian philosophy might be unfashion-able or unaccepted by the majority, Christians are perfectly warranted in holding their views in doing philosophy. Plantinga in the essay reflects on the sit-uation philosophers found themselves in as a prelude to the insights and nuances of his paper:

“Thirty or thirty-five years ago, the public temper of mainline establishment philoso-phy in the English speaking world was deeply non-Christian. Few establishment

31

philosophers were Christian; even fewer were willing to admit in public that they were, and still fewer thought of their being Christian as making a real difference to their practice as philosophers. The most popular question of philosophical theology, at that time, was not whether Christianity or theism is true; the question, instead, was whether it even makes sense to say that there is such a person as god. Accord-ing to the logical positivism then running riot, the sentence "there is such a person as God" literally makes no sense; it is dis-guised nonsense; it altogether fails to express a thought or a proposition. The central question wasn't whether theism is true; it was whether there is such a thing as theism-a genuine factual claim that is ei-ther true or false-at all. But things have changed.”27

Given this historical situation, Plantinga realizes that the motive of much philosophy in the 20th cen-tury has been to establish the mere meaningfulness of talking about God (or anything metaphysical), not questions of the truth of theism. Plantinga, however, realizes that this causes problems since the question of theism is of vital importance and, with his work, the question can meaningfully be raised. (Not that before his work it couldn’t, but it would not have

27 Ref. ACP. (Italics mine).

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been taken very seriously by other academics by in large). Consider a passage by Bertrand Russell:

Modern analytical empiricism, of which I have been giving an outline, differs from that of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume by its in-corporation of mathematics and its development of a powerful logical tech-nique. It is thus able, in regard to certain problems, to achieve definite answers, which have the quality of science rather than of philosophy. It has the advantage, as compared with the philosophies of the sys-tem builders, of being able to tackle its problems one at a time, instead of having to invent at one stroke a block theory of the whole universe. Its methods, in this respect, resemble those of science. I have no doubt that, in so far as philosophical knowledge is possible, it is by such methods that it must be sought; I have also no doubt that, by these methods, many ancient problems are completely soluble.28

This is an interesting passage; it begins with ‘analyt-ical empiricism’ and some of the tools it uses i.e., science; however, what it does not mention is what it would amount to if the ‘empiricism’ is eliminated. What results might be called mere ‘analytic philoso-phy’, but what presuppositions it relies on and how it

28 Ref. Russell history of western philosophy. Pg. 834.

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might function is up for discussion. Could an ana-lytic philosopher adhere to religious beliefs? Could there be such a thing as an analytic philosopher who is a Christian? Is Christian analytic philosophy co-herent? Plantinga notes this shift from logical positivism (and analytical empiricism) in philosophy to what might be called—what I myself am inclined to call—the beginning of ‘analytic philosophy of reli-gion’ explicit:

“There are now many more Christians and many more unabashed Christians in the professional mainstream of American phil-osophical life. For example, the foundation of the Society for Christian Philosophers, an organization to promote fellowship and exchange of ideas among Christian philos-ophers, is both an evidence and a consequence of that fact. Founded some six years ago, it is now a thriving organi-zation with regional meetings in every part of the country; its members are deeply involved in American professional philo-sophical life. So Christianity is on the move, and on the move in philosophy, as well as in other areas of intellectual life.”29

This paragraph allows the reader to see that Chris-tian philosophy has been revitalized and is now able to flourish (as it has begun to happen already), and

29 Ibid. ACP.

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now does not have to be seen as the perceived intel-lectually inferior group. Quentin Smith, an atheist philosopher, has even estimated that 1/3 of philoso-phy professors are now theists.30 Turning now th Plantinga’s essay, Plantinga delineates some advice to Christian philosophers, and how they might think of the relationship between philosophy and Christi-anity, the latter being a central focus and focal point for all intellectual and academic inquiry.

Plantinga begins his advice to Christian philos-ophers by exploring the relationship between academic work and Christianity and having listed off areas that are antithetical to Christian belief i.e., lit-erary criticism, sociology, psychology, Plantinga says the following31:

30 Ref. Is Goodness without God good enough? Introduction. 31 There are many areas Plantinga skips over, and rightly so.

For instance, there is no reference to many what ‘in-house’ debates i.e., the God of the Old Testament (and work done on it i..e, Paul Copan ref). Here is how William Lane Craig conceives of it:

“Yeah, again, is this supposed to be an argument? How does the influence of one’s geographical origin upon one’s religious beliefs do anything to show that God does not exist? Where’s the argument here, Kevin? Again, this is just potshots. It’s just sloganeering. I don’t see any argument from the relativity of religious belief to one’s geographical region to have any sort of proof that God doesn’t exist. What this would be an ar-gument for, I think, would be perhaps some sort of universalism; that because people’s beliefs tend to be shaped by their geographical origin that therefore God must cut them some slack in how he judges them. And that has nothing to do with the existence of God. That’s

35

“the fundamental and often unexpressed presuppositions that govern and direct the discipline are not religiously neutral; they are often antithetic to a Christian perspec-tive”32

He sees this as a concern for the Christian scholar (generally) and specifically Christian philosophers. He gives the following examples, prefixed by the no-tion that Christians must have autonomy and integrality:

“If contemporary psychology is fundamen-tally naturalist, then it is up to Christian

an in-house question among theists as to how God will judge the unevangelized. And I am persuaded that God will probably judge people based upon the amount of information that they do have and that people will not be judged on the basis of information that someone who is differently located geographically has.31

There are two goals in reading this paragraph the reader should

have (and why Plantinga does not discuss it). First, to understand what Craig means by ‘in-house’ and second, to consider an example of it i.e., the one Craig gives, namely, questions of how God will (or can or does) reach the unevangelized. The point is this: It does not matter to the truth of theism the internal questions that arise i.e., the nature of the atonement. As long as the thread—the “mere Christi-anity” C.S Lewis spoke of—is preserved, so does the whole system itself (and the rest is just working on details). There are many times this distinction is not made, and thus many reject Christianity be-cause of an in-house debate—which ought not be problematic; however, Plantinga’s paper is not apologetical—even if he does men-tion apologetics (but this is an important distinction).

32 Ref. Plantinga’s ACP: http://www.faithandphiloso-

phy.com/article_advice.php

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psychologists to develop an alternative that fits well with Christian supernatural-ism- one that takes its start from such scientifically seminal truths as that God has created humankind in his own im-age.”33

The Christian scholar must, therefore, see how the contemporary work being done fairs with Christian belief and how they might go together. To make Plantinga’s analysis so far even simpler, consider the following two propositions:

(1) Hedonism is true.

(2) Christianity is true.

It is undeniable that taken conjunctively (together) the conjunction of (1) and (2) is false. If you have (1), (2) must be incorrect. If you have (2), you cannot have (1). In other words, these are what philosophers call inconsistent propositions, that is, propositions which cannot be simultaneously true. So, Plantinga is urging that Christians see their scholarship not as isolated from Christian belief, but seen from the lens of Christianity itself. Notice, though, how different Plantinga’s vision of philosophy (and scholarship generally is) from the perceived vision. Plantinga is not espousing that Christians adopt a sort of meth-odological naturalism i.e., a method of inquiry which is naturalistic, but that Christians make the presup-positions clear and know that they are entitled to

33 Ibid.

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them. Another passage points itself out as making this exact point:

“So the Christian philosopher has his own topics and projects to think about; and when he thinks about the topics of current concern in the broader philosophical world, he will think about them in his own way, which may be a different way. He may have to reject certain currently fash-ionable assumptions about the philosophic enterprise-he may have to reject widely ac-cepted assumptions as to what are the proper starting points and procedures for philosophical endeavor. And-and this is crucially important- the Christian philoso-pher has a perfect right to the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is inter-esting but fundamentally irrelevant.”34

There are a number of points here which are worth making very clear:

(1) Christian philosophers have their own topics

to think about and work on.

(2) Christian philosophers might think differently

on current questions and might reject the

most fashionable positions.

34 Ibid. ACP.

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(3) Christian philosophers have the intellectual

right to have their own presuppositions.

These three points are, I think, the core of the pas-sage. Notice the importance of (1), however, as Plantinga urges philosophers to realize that their projects and concerns might not align with the cur-rently fashionable topics of secular concern. Thus, the Christian philosopher’s goals are not merely in-tellectual praise (far from it); rather, they are to serve the Christian community (which ultimately is reducible to doing God’s will). And a consequence of this is (2); Christians might reject the most com-monly held assumptions. This, though, is no surprise to my mind: Just because everyone thinks a contra-ception belt is morally permissible in Brave New World or 2+2=5 in 1984, does not mean these are true assumptions. Lastly, (3) is important for all aca-demic disciplines in general; Plantinga is suggesting that there is a particular problem with asserting that the Christian is not entitled to her or his philosophi-cal presuppositions when, in fact, they are entitled to them. While it is always a good idea to make argu-ments with premises that most people accept and show how the conclusion has theistic significance (I suppose this is the structure of many natural theo-logical arguments), this is not necessarily the case philosophy must work i.e., one might suppose the B-Theory of time is false on theological grounds—and the Christian is entitled this presupposition. What is at work here is the notion that if Christian’s are to do academic work (especially in philosophy, I think), they must see how interconnected their work is to

39

Christianity. While it is not always easy to detect this (especially in something like logic), this does ab-solutely nothing to show that the Christian isn’t entitled to make his or her presuppositions known or that the Christian must do his or her work without reference to their faith at all. Should the Christian decide not do to their work with explicit reference (as I am sure is often the case outside philosophy—and sometimes in philosophy35), the Christian is nev-ertheless entitled to them. Plantinga is offering a new way to think of philosophy as integrative with, and not antithetical to, Christianity. Plantinga sets what I think is the ultimate goal of Christian philos-ophy quite clearly:

“Philosophy is many things. I said earlier that it is a matter of systematizing, devel-oping and deepening one's pre-philosophical opinions. It is that; but it is also an arena for the articulation and inter-play of commitments and allegiances fundamentally religious in nature; it is an expression of deep and fundamental per-spectives, ways of viewing ourselves and the world and God. Among its most im-portant and pressing projects are systematizing, deepening, exploring, artic-ulating this perspective, and exploring its

35 Ref. Robert Koon’s paper that suggests that Christians

should, to avoid bias and unemployment, make their thesis (PhD) not explicitly Christian.

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bearing on the rest of what we think and do.”36

Notice the words “systematizing, deepening, explor-ing, articulating”; these constitute the project for the Christian philosopher and they have fundamental relevance to other beliefs we might adhere to. If I may put emphasis on the word “exploring”, this is critical to understand for two reasons. First, the Christian philosopher always has more to learn. Christianity is not a religion of non-thinking people who adhere dogmatically to doctrines; rather, Chris-tianity—as a system of thought—is a religion that embraces (at least in Catholicism) faith and reason.

In Plantinga’s essay, he explores what the Christian philosopher is, what work he or she might do, and what relevance Christianity has to philoso-phy generally. Taking the perspective of Plantinga, then, the Christian has his or her own projects to un-dergo, and the fact that the projects—or approaches/methods to those projects—are not widely accepted, does not do anything to undermine them.

Summary

In Chapter 1, we have seen the historical context (only in vague and brief outline) of the former half of 20th century philosophy in the English speaking world. 20th century philosophy involved much philo-sophical notions which precluded meaningful

36 Ref. ACP.

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conversation about metaphysics, and by entailment God too.37 It was only with the publication of Alvin Plantinga’s God and Other Minds (1967) that Chris-tian philosophy emerged and began to flourish. Plantinga’s “Advice to Christian Philosophers” (1984) was a delineation of the nature of Christian scholarship (with a focus on Christian philosophy specifically) and made way for Christian philosophy to further its projects and methodology in doing so.

37 For any who deny this entailment (perhaps it seems I am

making it too strong), for the benefit of the doubt I will re-print Ayer’s own words to ensure what I am saying is textually accurate: “This mention of God brings us to the question of the possibility of religious knowledge. We shall see that this possibility has already been ruled out by our treatment of metaphysics.” (LTL, pg. 114). Since religious knowledge is ruled out (since presumably knowing God is metaphysical knowledge), in his view, this means that the ina-bility to talk meaningfully about metaphysics implies not being able to talk meaningfully about God.

42

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Chapter 2

Natural Theology, Reformed Epistemology and the Failure of Theological Rationalism

“The wealth of material which is available to the Christian apologist through the labor of analytic phi-losophers is simply breathtaking.”38 -William Lane Craig “We are to defend Christianity itself—the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyers, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers.” -C.S Lewis, “Christian Apologetics” (1945)39

2.1 What is a Natural Theological Argument?

One sympathizes with Martin Heidegger’s (1889-1976) opening statement of his Being and Time (1927): “This question [of the meaning of being] has today been forgotten.”40 Indeed, it is when we look at the world we often encounter an intuition that “it is not how things are in the world that is mystical,

38 Ref. Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/ad-

vice-to-christian-apologists-calvin-college#ixzz4KuZYt2cE 39 Ref. God in the Dock. Pg. 87. 40 Ref. Being and Time. Pg. 21.

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but that it exists.”41 One way of answering these big questions, is by offering reasons why God exists (and seeing if they are successful arguments). Wil-liam Lane Craig’s statement above summarizes nicely what happened in the latter half of the 20th century and early in the 21st century, namely, that the renaissance of Christian philosophy—domi-nantly analytic Christian philosophers—has brought about a “breaktaking” amount of resources for the Christian philosopher to engage with. Natural theol-ogy, a sub-discipline of theology, deals with (and here is a formal definition), evidences of the exist-ence of God, typically in the form of an argument—not a “proof”—which has premises which are more plausibly true than false and which has theological significance in its conclusion.42 So, when asked by a non-believer “how do you know that God exists?” one is rational in saying that the personal experience of God is sufficient to know Him, but that there are arguments for His existence, for instance, the typical ones given: First Cause, Prime Mover, Axiological (Moral), Teleological and Ontological et cetera. This is not to say that each argument is logically conclu-sive, even theists of various sorts deny this43; rather, the arguments accumulate into a case for theism, to which further can be added to shift theism into

41 Ref. Wittgenstein. Tractatus-Logico etc. pg. 88. 42 This definition is roughly the same as William Lane Craig

defines it. Ref. Reaosnable faith (everywhere, basically). 43 Plantinga explicitly says this. Ref. Plantinga conference In-

terview.

45

Christian theism.44 This project—of establishing ar-guments for God’s existence—properly belongs to natural theology (though many working on these ar-guments are philosophers and not theologians).

2.2 A Brief Overview of the History of Natural The-ological Arguments

Natural theology begins, minimally, with Plato and Aristotle. In the case of the former, he ad-vocates a cosmological argument, to the effect that the natural of causality requires that there must be an uncaused First-Cause (whom theists would call God). In the latter, the argument here, too, is cosmo-logical, but with reference to “movement”, in particular the requirement—says Aristotle—of a First-Mover. This furthers into the Medieval Period when St. Anselm gave his famous Ontological Argu-ment, an argument which moved from the concept of God to the actual existence of Him. Shortly thereaf-ter, St. Thomas Aquinas gave his famous “5 Ways” and this accumulated into a nice piece of natural the-ology. Moving to early modern philosophy, Descartes defended an ontological argument in his Meditations (1641), with a project similar to St. An-selm’s. Moving to the threshold between early modern and modern philosophy, the philosopher Im-manuel Kant (1724-1804), rejected the ontological argument by arguing that existence is not a predi-cate, to which Alvin Plantinga has had much to say in the 20th century. William Lane Craig, Richard

44 This is the apologetics model of WLC. Ref. Every debate.

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Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga have defended an entire natural theology to the effect that there exists an impressive natural theology available for the the-ist should he or she be inclined to accept rational arguments as—when taken conjunctively (unless one wanted an impoverished concept of God)—con-stitutive of a case for theism. The worry with these arguments are, indeed, justified: Is the only reasonable way to believe in God through evidence? To many, this thesis—theological rationalism—is evidently false, and it is only in Alvin Plantinga’s work that there is an account of rationally justifiable belief in God not on the basis of natural theological arguments. While I do not want to overstretch the history of natural theological arguments (since unless one is going to really study the arguments through and through, it is simply not needed), it is important to show what some of these philosophical, natural theological sys-tems look like. In my view—and this view is, of course, subject to changing as I myself learn more—William Lane Craig is the foremost natural theolo-gian of the 21st century.45

2.3 The Revival of Natural Theology and the Failure of Theological Rationalism46

45 Plantinga disagrees with me here. Ref. Occasionalism paper

in the introduction. 46 Since I am presenting a ‘natural theological system’ here in-

stead of an argument, in the appendix I will display how one might defend one of these arguments (as I have). For spatial considerations, I am leaving out the philosophical system of Richard Swinburne, a very sad omission, but one which I must leave out (in a revised ver-sion, there will probably be a comparative analysis of WLC and

47

William Lane Craig’s natural theological sys-tem is a philosophical system, aimed at rationally establishing a case for theism, and in specific Chris-tian theism. The case is put like this (roughly):

1. Natural theological arguments establish the

existence of God with certain properties,

taken conjunctively one develops (1) a rich

concept of God (as is found in monotheistic re-

ligions i.e., Judaism, Islam and ultimately in

Christianity), as well as (2) a higher probabil-

ity that God exists.47

2. There are seven reasons why a (monotheistic)

God exists (I will only write them in outline

because Scharp’s diagram will put them in

full):

(i) Ontological Argument: If God’s existence

is possible, by a certain metaphysics of mo-

dality (S5) He exists.

(ii) Cosmological Argument (Contingency and

Kalam): The beginning of the universe

strongly suggests a Creator.

(iii) Teleological Argument: Chance and physi-

cal necessity are not plausible candidates to

explain fine-tuning.

Swinburne’s system. For more work on Swinburne’s, see Ref. The Existence of God. Or his popular Is there a God?

47 Ref. Timothy McGrew on taking the arguments together, Ref. Plantinga’s A-Y argument.

48

(iv) Mathematical Argument: The best expla-

nation for the applicability of mathematics

to the world is a God who realized a world

(the actual world) that involved mathemat-

ics being applicable to it.

(v) Moral Argument: The objectivity of moral-

ity requires that God exists.

(vi) Experience Argument48: God can be per-

sonally known and experienced.

(vii) Intentional States of Consciousness Argu-

ment: God is the best explanation as to

why there are intentional states of con-

sciousness in the physical world since He

Himself is a free, conscious agent.

3. There are good historical grounds for suppos-

ing the resurrection of Jesus to be reliable:

“1. There was insufficient time for legendary influences to expunge the historical facts. The interval of time between the events them-selves and recording of them in the gospels is too short to have allowed the memory of what had or had not actually happened to be erased.

2. The gospels are not analogous to folk tales or contemporary "urban legends." Tales like those of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill or

48 He admits that this is not an “argument” per se, but can be

formulated. Ref. Scharp debate.

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contemporary urban legends like the "van-ishing hitchhiker" rarely concern actual historical individuals and are thus not analogous to the gospel narratives.

3. The Jewish transmission of sacred tradi-tions was highly developed and reliable. In an oral culture like that of first century Pales-tine the ability to memorize and retain large tracts of oral tradition was a highly prized and highly developed skill. From the earliest age children in the home, ele-mentary school, and the synagogue were taught to memorize faithfully sacred tradi-tion. The disciples would have exercised similar care with the teachings of Jesus.

4. There were significant restraints on the em-bellishment of traditions about Jesus, such as the presence of eyewitnesses and the apostles’ supervision. Since those who had seen and heard Jesus continued to live and the tradi-tion about Jesus remained under the supervision of the apostles, these factors would act as a natural check on tendencies to elaborate the facts in a direction con-trary to that preserved by those who had known Jesus.”49

49 Ref. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-evidence-for-

jesus#ixzz4Kw0uQSM3

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4. Natural theological arguments, the experience

argument and the case for the resurrection of

Jesus (and answers to objections of various

kinds i.e., epistemological naturalism, method-

ological naturalism), are sufficient to establish

the truth of Christian theism.

This impressive natural theological system causes much debate and much to think about. It is im-portant, then, that the Christian realize the amount of information that analytic philosophers of religion have provided for the benefit of apologetics, evange-lism (in some cases), and for philosophy generally. It is important not to forget these natural theological arguments as, for instance, the old slogan “there is no evidence for God” has been wiped off the face of philosophy (and so philosophy must be done in light of this).

In his 2016 debate with Kevin Scharp in Febru-ary 2016 at the Veritas Forum, Craig presented his typical case for theism50, and Scharp replied accord-ingly. Scharp provided a slide with William Lane Craig’s philosophical system.51 In my view, this chart (while completely appropriate in the context of the debate), does not do a justice to the system Craig has actually made.

50 Read the article here: Ref. Reasonablefaith. “Does God Ex-

ist?” Popular articles section. 51 It is accessible from the debate transcript. Reasonablefaith.

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While Craig himself is content with this sys-tem52, I think it is insufficient to go into the real depths of the arguments (and is, I suspect, much of the reason who Scharp does not get it right in the debate).53 Like Scharp54, I have also listened to al-most all 8 years of the ReasonableFaith podcast (I hope this is not prideful, but an honest testimony about my acquaintance with William Lane Craig’s work). I will share where there could have been much added to Scharp’s chart to go into the depths of Craig’s natural theological project.

There are, I think, important additions to be made. First off, there are no objections and replies mentioned. As arguments with premises more plau-sibly true than false (on non-theistic grounds), with a conclusion having theological significance, it is im-portant to realize that much of the work Craig does is in (1) defending these premises and (2) answering objections to them. For instance, consider the Kalam cosmological argument. Craig gives justification much more in-depth than mere premises, for in-stance, consider the Kalam cosmological argument.

52 Craig only notices two flaws Ref. Podcast. (1) A typo (missing

premise) on the teleological argument and (2) a mis-statement of Craig’s actual Experience argument. Ref. Podcast: Review of Scharp debate. Part 1 (I think).

53 I have shared some thoughts on the debate here: Blog ref. 54 Scharp has listened to it all. Ref. debate review with WLC.

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Craig gives three reasons to accept the first prem-ise55, two for the second56, and has done much work on the conclusion (to prove validity).57 Alongside this, Craig has answered objections from mathemat-ics58, cosmology59 and other philosophical arguments.60 Craig has even written on this history of the cosmological argument.61 More than this, Craig also wrote two scholarly books62 dealing with issues in the philosophy of time upon which the ar-gument rests, problems regarding absolute simultaneity63 and where the argument fits within a natural theological project.64 as well as a popularized version for the layman.65 While I think it fruitless to explain all of his work in full here (it goes beyond

55 See the book that flowed from his doctoral dissertation in phi-

losophy Ref. Kalam Cosmological Argument. 56 The evidence he presents can be found here. Ref. Sean Carroll

debate. 57 The arguments are found here. Ref. http://www.reasonable-

faith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe 58 For the arguments against the infinity of the past on mathe-

matical grounds, see his Kalam Cosmological Argument. Chapter ?. 59 For the arguments in favor of a universe with a beginning,

see his debate with Sean Carroll. 60 For interaction with philosophical arguments against the

finitude of the past, see his Kalam Cosmological Argument. Appen-dix. ? (The one with Kant).

61 See his Ref. Cosmological Argument: From Plato to Leibniz. 62 Ref. Tense-less theory of time and Ref. tensed theory of time. 63 Ref. Quentin Smith and Craig. Relativity and Absolute Sim-

ultaneity. 64 Philosophical Foundations for a Christian worldview w/ Mo-

reland. 65 Time and Eternity.

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my purposes here), it is important to realize some-thing very significant at work: the natural theological system Craig has built is a thorough, an-alytic and rigorous philosophical system. It has incorporated perspectives from different fields i.e., mathematics, philosophy of language, and has syn-thesized current knowledge into a framework which provides space for arguments having religiously-neutral premises and a theologically significant con-clusion. While Scharp’s diagram surely is helpful for seeing Craig’s natural theological project, it is by no means indicative of the full system Craig has built. Alongside Craig’s arguments, though, there are oth-ers which have had significant developments. The most notable example is, I think, the ontological ar-gument, the axiological (moral) argument and the argument from reason.

2.4 Other Developments in Natural Theology: Onto-logical, Axiological and The Argument from Reason

The ontological argument has a long, famous history. Even though many reject it as at best ‘philo-sophically spurious’, the originality and interestingness of the argument still strike philo-sophical speculation for those interested in the philosophy of religion. In his Proslogian, St. Anselm (1033-1109) what might be called the classical ver-sion of the ontological argument:

“Therefore, 0 Lord, You who give understanding to faith, grant me to understand—to the degree You

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know to be advantageous—that You exist, as we be-lieve, and that You are what we believe [You to be]. Indeed, we believe You to be something than which nothing greater can be thought. Or is there, then, no such nature [as You], for the Fool has said in his heart that God does not exist?2 [Psalms 13:1 & 52:1 (14:1 & 53:1)]. But surely when this very same Fool hears my words “something than which nothing greater can be thought,” he understands what he hears. And what he understands is in his under-standing, even if he does not understand [i.e., judge] it to exist. For that a thing is in the understanding is distinct from understanding that [this] thing exists. For example, when a painter envisions what he is about to paint: he indeed has in his understanding that which he has not yet made, but he does not yet understand that it exists. But after he has painted [it]: he has in his understanding that which he has made, and he understands that it exists. So even the Fool is convinced that something than which noth-ing greater can be thought is at least in his understanding; for when he hears of this [being], he understands [what he hears], and whatever is un-derstood is in the understanding. But surely that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot be only in the understanding. For if it were only in the understanding, it could be thought to exist also in reality—something which is greater [than existing only in the understanding]. Therefore, if that than which a greater cannot be thought were only in the understanding, then that than which a greater can-not be thought would be that than which a greater

55

can be thought! But surely this [conclusion] is im-possible. Hence, without doubt, something than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in the understanding and in reality.”66

This argument has been schematized nicely by Plantinga:

(1) God exists in the understanding but not in re-

ality—assumption for reductio.

(2) Existence in reality is greater than existence

in the understanding along—premise.

(3) A being having all of God’s properties plus ex-

istence in reality is greater than God—from

(1) and (2).

(4) A being greater than God can be conceived—

(3), (4).

(5) It is false that a being greater than God can be

conceived—by a definition of “God.”

(6) Hence it is false that God exists in the under-

standing but not in reality—(1)-(6), reductio ad

absurdum.67

This argument is very strategic; however, the phi-losopher Immanuel Kant tried to show how this argument did not succeed:

“If, in an identical proposition, I reject the predicate while retaining the subject, con-tradiction results; and I therefore say that

66 Ref. http://jasper-hopkins.info/proslogion.pdf pgs. 93-94. 67 Ref. God and Other Minds. Pg. 29.

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the former belongs necessarily to the lat-ter. But if we reject the subject and predicate alike, there is no contradiction; for nothing is then left that can be contra-dicted. To posit a triangle, and yet to reject its three angles, is self-contradic-tory; but there is no contradiction in rejecting the triangle together with its three angles. The same holds true of the concept of an absolutely necessary being. If its existence is rejected, we reject the thing itself with all its predicates; and no question of contradiction can then arise. There is nothing outside it that would then be contradicted, since the necessity of the thing is not supposed to be derived from anything external; nor is there any-thing internal that would be contradicted, since in rejecting the thing itself we have at the same time rejected all its internal properties. "Cod is omnipotent" is a neces-sary judgment. The omnipotence cannot be rejected if we posit a Deity, that is, an infinite being; for the two concepts are identical. But if we say "There is no Cod," neither the omnipotence nor any other of its predicates is given; they are one and all rejected together with the subject, and

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there is therefore not the least contradic-tion in such a judgment…”68

To this, Plantinga says the following in re-sponse:

“What he [Kant] means to say, I believe, is that no existential proposition is neces-sary in the broadly logical sense. And this claim has been popular with philosophers ever since. But why, exactly, does Kant think it's true? What is the argument? When we take a careful look at the pur-ported reasoning, it looks pretty unimpressive; it's hard to make out an ar-gument at all. The conclusion would apparently be this: if we deny the existence of something or other, we can't be contra-dicting ourselves; no existential proposition is necessary and no contra-ex-istential is impossible. Why not? Well, if we say, for example, that God does not ex-ist, then says Kant, "There is nothing outside it (i.e., God) that would then be contradicted, since the necessity of the thing is not supposed to be derived from anything external; nor is there anything internal that would be contradicted, since in rejecting the thing itself we have at the

68 Ref. God, freedom and evil pg. 92. Immanuel Kant, Critique

of Pure Reason, cd. Norman Kemp SmIth (New York Macmillan Co , 1929) Some relevant passages are reprinted In Plantinga, The On-tological Argument, pp 57-64

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same time rejected all its internal proper-ties." But how is this even relevant? The claim is that God does not exist can't be nec-essarily false. What could be meant, in this context, by saying that there's nothing "outside of" God that would be contra-dicted if we denied His existence? What would contradict a proposition like God does not exist is some other proposition—God does exist, for example. Kant seems to think that if the proposition in question were necessarily false, it would have to contradict, not a proposition, but some ob-ject external to God--or else contradict some internal part or aspect or property of God. But this certainly looks like confu-sion; it is propositions that contradict each other; they aren't contradicted by objects or parts, aspects or properties of objects. Does he mean instead to be speaking of propositions about things external to God, or about his aspects or parts or properties? But clearly many such propositions do con-tradict God does not exist; an example would be the world was created by God. Does he mean to say that no true proposition con-tradicts God does not exist? No, for that would be to affirm the nonexistence of

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God, an affirmation Kant is by no means prepared to make.”69

Given his dispute with Kant, he cited another central piece from Kant which extends his argument further:

“Being is obviously not a real predicate, i.e., a concept of something that could add to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing" of a thing or of certain determi-nations in themselves. In the logical use it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition God is omnipotent contains two concepts that have their objects: God and omnipotence; the little word "is" is not a predicate in it, but only that which posits the predicate in relation to the subject. Now if ! take the subject (God) together with all his predicates (among which om-nipotence belongs), and say God is, or there is a God, then I add no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its predicates, and indeed posit the object in relation to my concept. Both must contain exactly the same, and hence when I think this object as given absolutely (through the expres-sion, "it is"), nothing is thereby added to the concept, which expresses merely its possibility. Thus the actual contains noth-ing more than the merely possible. A

69 Ref. ibid God freedom and evil pg. 93.

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hundred actual dollars do not contain the least bit more than a hundred possible ones. For since the latter signifies the con-cept and the former its object and its positing in itself, then, in case the former contained more than the latter, my concept would not express the entire object and thus would not be the suitable concept of it. But in my financial condition there is more with a hundred actual dollars than with the mere concept of them (i.e., their possibility). For with actuality the object is not merely included in my concept analyti-cally, but adds synthetically to my concept (which is a determination of my state); yet the hundred dollars themselves that I am thinking of are not in the least increased through this being outside my concept. Thus when I think a thing, through whichever and however many A6oo/ B 628 predicates I like (even in its thorough-going determination), not the least bit gets added to the thing when I posit in addition that this thing is. For otherwise what would exist would not be the same as what I had thought in my concept, but more than that, and I could not say that the very object of my concept exists.”70

70 Kant, Cambridge edition Critique of Pure Reason, pg. 567-

568. Plantinga quotes from the McMillian translation but I am using

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Plantinga responds to this by suggesting that this objection, while simply correct in what it purports to show, has no relevance to Kant’s argument. In fact, it does nothing at all to falsify St. Anselm’s argu-ment. Plantinga, somewhat rhetorically, puts his conclusion this way: “Couldn't Anselm thank Kant for this interesting point and proceed merrily on his way?”71 There are two moves to note here that can be made. One can espouse what might be called a ‘modal ontological argument’ or another nuanced version of the ontological argument without adopt-ing S5 in modal logic (the axiom that ‘possibly P’ implies ‘necessarily possibly P’). Let me begin with the former, a reductio of the former, and a reductio of the reductio.

Here is the modal ontological argument as Alvin Plantinga formulates it:

1. It is possible that a maximally great being ex-

ists.

2. If it is possible that a maximally great being

exists, then a maximally great being exists in

some possible world.

3. If a maximally great being exists in some pos-

sible world, then it exists in every possible

world.

a different translation but the same quote he references in GFE. Pg. 94-95.

71 God freedom and evil pg. 97.

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4. If a maximally great being exists in every pos-

sible world, then it exists in the actual world.

5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual

world, then a maximally great being exists.

6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.72

The crucial premise is (1). For if one denies (1), the whole argument collapses. While even philosopher William Lane Craig admits that (1) is “admittedly very difficult” for the theist to defend, nonetheless I think there can be progress in this area. For in-stance, take three natural theological arguments: the cosmological argument, teleological and axiological. Even if one rejects all three of these arguments, there are many, many more. For instance, the cos-mological argument in the form of a contingency argument, the argument from consciousness and the argument from love et cetera. The intellectually humble approach, I think, is for the non-theist to ad-mit the metaphysical possibility of the existence of God. But, of course, one can always deny (1) for ad hoc reasons.

Here is the reductio:

1. It is possible that a maximally bad being ex-

ists.

72 Ref. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/misunderstanding-

the-ontological-argument Accessed August 7th, 2016.

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2. If it is possible that a maximally bad being ex-

ists, then a maximally bad being exists in

some possible world.

3. If a maximally bad being exists in some possi-

ble world, then it exists in every possible

world.

4. If a maximally bad being exists in every possi-

ble world, then it exists in the actual world.

5. If a maximally bad being exists in the actual

world, then a maximally bad being exists.

6. Therefore, a maximally bad being exists

So, in the place of ‘great’, ‘bad’ is substituted. This means that if a maximally great being exists, so does a maximally bad being (which might not be what the theists wants); the theist is then offered an option: Deny the ontological argument or hold it and admit that there exists a maximally bad being. This is an inclusive ‘or’, I should say in passing. And, so, the theist can no longer hold to the ontological argument, so the argument goes.

Here are two responses which I think sufficiently show that this is not so.

(1) The first premise in the reductio is not self-evi-dently or intuitively true. Consider the justification for (1). There simply isn’t any. Now, one might say that “any natural theological argument can success-fully show that the “God” that exists is a “maximally

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bad being” since many of the arguments do not es-tablish His moral properties.” But this is simply false. What, for instance, the Kalam argument gives you, is a concept of God without moral properties—granted; however, when taken conjunctively73 with, say, the axiological (moral) argument, things are dif-ferent, for then the argument does succeed—if true—in establishing (i) the existence of God and (ii) the existence of a moral God. To deny (1) of the re-ductio can be established on two grounds, though: (i) Deny the coherence of a ‘maximally bad being’ or (ii) show how it is improbable and therefore warranted to reject (1). I do not want to argue as the defender of (i) would want to. For the sake of argument, I will accept (i). But, (ii) seems more promising. Given the plethora of natural theological arguments, (1) in the modal ontological argument seems at least mini-mally plausible to accept. But, in the reductio, there is simply no reason to accept (1) (asides “I’ll just grant you (1)” reasons).

(2) Take an analogy. Suppose that instead of “maxi-mally bad being” we say “maximally bad book” (i.e., Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion). While the lat-ter is incoherent, it also does not have the great making property of “existing.” Applied to the reduc-tio, “existing” seems to be a great making property—not a bad one. If one says in defense of (1)

73 Natural theological arguments taken conjunctively can raise

the probability of God’s existence immensely, as Timothy McGrew, William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga argue. Ref. (Defenders class note/podcast review).

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that “a bad being would be worse if the being ex-isted”, they do not realize that “existing” is a great making property—and therefore if the “maximally bad being” exists, it is not really a “maximally bad being.” Why? There is a worse being, a “maximally bad being that does not”. So, we have a reductio of the reductio: the “maximally bad being”, in order to exist, has to fail to exist. The law of non-contradic-tion has it that P & not-P is logically impossible and therefore either the being exists or does not; in order to exist, it must fail to exist, and therefore the reduc-tio is a reductio of itself.

These are just two reasons I see out of the ar-gument, and I hope I have shown that the reductio does not succeed as a successful defeater of the modal ontological argument. Given that the modal ontological argument has some plausibility, suppose that someone denied axiom S5 of modal logic, namely, that “‘P’ logically implies ‘Necessarily Possi-bly P.” While many have regarded this as a metaphysical axiom, and while this might be of in-terest only to those with a really staunch desire to go further into these technical issues, there is good news. There is developed an ontological argument without S5.

Robert Adams, in his The Virtue of Faith, has an ontological argument without S5 that, as Alex Pruss notes, “only needs the Brouwer axiom

p→LMp, namely that if p is true, it not only is possi-ble, but it is a necessary truth that p is possible.”

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Pruss schematizes a version of the argument as fol-lows:

1. L(G→LG).

Add that possibly God exists:

2. MG.

The proof is simple:

3. MLG. (By 1 and 2 and K)

4. ~G→LM~G. (Brouwer)

5. MLG→G. (Contraposition on 4)

6. G. (Modus ponens on 3 and 5).74

So, while some may have avoided the ontolog-ical argument axiomatically from their views in the metaphysics of modality i.e., denying S5, it is open for discussion whether or not Adams has solved this problem; my conclusion is that while the ontological argument by St. Anselm remains in good shape the modal ontological argument and ontological argu-ment without S5 are arguments worth considering, since they are highly sophisticated developments of natural theology. Turning now to another highly worked on argument in natural theology, namely, the axiological (moral argument).

74 Ref. This was retrieved (April 10, 2016) from Alex Pruss’

philosophical blog: http://alexanderpruss.blog-spot.ca/2013/04/adams-ontological-argument.html.

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There are two basic problems:

(1) Objective goodness

(2) Objective badness

Why think that (1) and (2) are actually parts of real-ity, one might ask? Well, there are just manifest instances of (1). Loving kindness, altruism, benevo-lence and so forth come across as examples. (2) is merely a privation of (1).75 But let us, for the benefit of the doubt, give concrete examples of (1) to show its validity.76

In his Defining Love (2010), Thomas J. Oord cites the following example:

“The Germans came and took a look at our house. They told us we had to take in a German couple who were living on the coast. We were worried because they would find out we were keeping Jewish people. They took the living room, bed-room, bathroom, and kitchen upstairs. Slowly they found out the truth. One day we had soup on the kitchen stove. The German woman came downstairs and lifted the lid to see what was in the pot.

75 St. Augustine Ref. 76 The notion that ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ are subjective seems

to me (1) self-referentially incoherent, (2) implausible (and under-cuts the problem of evil) and (3) does not make rational sense out of our moral experiences. It is for these—and other—reasons that after giving examples of objective goodness, I take it to be self-evident that morality is objective i.e., mind-independent.

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Willy—the Jewish guy—saw that. He said, “It’s not ladylike to lift the lid from the pot.” I told him, “Be careful what you say; don’t make trouble!” I had the feeling something would happen. I told my hus-band, “Let’s go away, let’s find a place,” but he said, “You’re crazy!” But I had a feeling. My husband should have listened to me. This woman, the German lady, went to the police. She told them we had a Jew hiding. She said, “I would like to have the Jew taken away from there, but don’t do anything to the people.” She was refer-ring to us. She thought the police were safe. But the guy she spoke to worked for the NSB, the Nazis. She didn’t know that. It was four o’clock on a clear Sunday after-noon. My husband had just come home from taking our little girl on a sled ride. He was home just ten minutes when the Gestapo came—with a dog. The dog ran upstairs, and there was shooting. My little girl was crying because her Daddy was screaming. I took my little girl and ran out the door. The dog smelled out the hiding place. My husband wouldn’t say anything, so they set the dog on him. It bit off his hand. They shot my husband and one of the Jews.”77

77 Oord. 86-87.

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An important question arises to this: Was this objec-tively good of the Dutch rescuer who knew the risk of helping the Jews? If it was good, why was it good? Clearly an explanation is needed as to what makes the aforementioned example good, that is, its ontological foundation. While a debate in ethics is not the purpose of this section, it is important to remember that there are many ethical perspectives, both metaethical and normative, but the main point is the following: What warrant can be provided for the claim that the afore-mentioned example is good? What ontological considerations are there to make this claim work? So, it is here that considerations must be made of the on-tological sort. William Lane Craig, not surprisingly, has devised an argument of this sort in the following way:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

2. Objective moral values do exist. 3. Therefore, God exists.78

The central premise is (2). While (1) is controversial, the previous section of the book dealing with God and meaning make it quite clear that in the absence of God, there can be no such thing as objective moral truths. (2) posits the existence of good and bad things independent of whether anyone believes it or not. For

78 http://www.reasonablefaith.org/does-god-exist-

1#ixzz4OjRAZPmv

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instance, if I help my neighbour despite living in a so-ciety—hypothetically speaking—where this is illegal, I am doing something good (objectively). Contrarily, when I act against what I ought to do by, for instance, murdering an innocent human being, I am acting badly not in virtue of my society rejecting such behav-ior, but in virtue of it being contrary to what morality requires. The downside to having objective goodness, is the consequent possibility of objective badness. This is a problem for two reasons. First, objective badness is a clear privation of the way things ought to be.79 Secondly, it begets the problem of evil. But, the problem of evil begins with the assumption that there is both objective goodness and objective bad-ness, the latter being a consequent distortion of the former. For those unconvinced of the existence of ob-jective badness, let me give some terrible examples of evil. Let me give one literary example and one real life example, beginning with the former:

“A Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,” Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother’s words, “told me about the crimes commit-ted by the Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through a fear of a general ris-ing of the Slavs. They burn villages, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning

79 St. Augustine’s idea.

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they hang them—all sorts of things you can’t imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel to a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in tor-turing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother’s womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother’s eyes. Doing it before the mother’s eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invad-ing Turks around her. They’ve planned a diversion; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out his little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains. Artis-tic, wasn’t it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.”80

80 Plantinga (softcover), God, Freedom and Evil. Pg. 9.

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This disgusting and horrifyingly immoral picture meets, unfortunately, a counter-part in the real world:

“A young Muslim mother in Bosnia was re-peatedly raped in front of her husband and father, with her baby screaming on the floor beside her. When her tormentors seemed fi-nally tired of her, she begged permission to nurse the child. In response, one of the rap-ists swiftly decapitated the baby and threw the head in the mother’s lap.”81

These and many other examples demonstrate, I think existentially, the objective badness of some actions. If these things are horrible and tremendously disgust-ing, it is not a taste that is being posited, but an objective value which is present independent of any cognizers whatsoever. But, if it is true that this is ob-jectively bad, objective goodness also exists—and therefore under William Lane Craig’s argument, it follows that God exists. If one thinks that the exist-ence of evil undermines God’s existence, one has to remember merely that any attempt to answer the “problem of evil” must involve “evil”; since “evil” can only exist if there is a God, it follows that the problem of evil is only a real problem if God already exists—but this is just motivation to think He has morally sufficient reasons we just are not entirely aware of.82

81 Plantinga Knowledge and Christian Belief. Pg. 120. 82 WLC’s thesis in PFCW.

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Given that the moral argument is a successful argu-ment for God’s existence, it is time to move on to another argument. ROUGH DRAFT WILL NOT INCLUDE THE ARGUMENT FROM REASON (THIS IS FOR THE NEXT DRAFT)—AND PLANTINGA’S ARGUMENT WILL APPEAR MUCH MORE SUBSTANTIALLY TOO.

The argument from reason has a long history, but it has received very sophisticated treatments and discussions in recent times. There still exists an important question though: Does belief in God necessarily require evidence? As I have said before, a positive answer would be of the theological rationalist sort. Craig has had much to say about theological rationalism, and so I think it valuable to share his reasons for rejecting it (and af-terwards I will also explain an account of theistic (Christian theistic, really) belief which is not natural theological in nature.

Craig goes over the roots of the rise of theo-logical rationalism as follows. He begins with drawing attention to the Protestant Reformation which, in their fervour to “challenge[] the authority of the Church in the name of Scripture and reason”, and thereafter (I am skipping much of the historical analysis for brevity) rationalism and thereafter theo-logical rationalism of Descartes and Locke:

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“Descartes’ epistemological rationalism promoted theological rationalism and the rational approach to apologetics. For his method of doubt seemed to imply that the existence of God could be doubted and therefore needed to be demonstrated by rational argumentation.”83

It is not long after that Craig writes:

“When we turn to the eighteenth century, undoubtedly the most significant influence for theological rationalism upon both Eng-lish and French Deism was Locke…[Locke’s] empiricism replaced the epistemological innatism of Descartes while manifesting an even more vigorous adherence to the primacy of reason in mat-ters of religion.”84

The basic idea here is this: If your epistemologi-cal foundation of knowledge requires empirical evidence, theological rationalism is inevitable (it is axiomatic that theological rationalism is true); however, if you deny this epistemic crite-ria, what are you left with? Craig suggests that we can have a knowledge of God that does not come from rational argumentation, but from personal experience of God Himself:

83 Ref pg. 236-237, 246. (The historical argument for the resur-

rection.). 84 Ref. Ibid. pg. 247.

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“This isn’t really an argument for God’s existence; rather it’s the claim that you can know God exists wholly apart from argu-ments, by personally experiencing him. Philosophers call beliefs grasped in this way ‘properly basic beliefs’. They aren’t based on some other beliefs; rather they’re part of the foundation of a person’s system of beliefs. Other properly basic beliefs would be the belief in the reality of the past or the existence of the external world. When you think about it, neither of these beliefs can be proved by argument. How could you prove that the world was not created five minutes ago with built-in ap-pearances of age like food in our stomachs from the breakfasts we never really ate and memory traces in our brains of events we never really experienced? How could you prove that you are not a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated with electrodes by some mad scientist to believe that you are reading this article? We don’t base such beliefs on argument; rather they’re part of the foundations of our system of beliefs. But although these sorts of beliefs are basic for us, that doesn’t mean that they’re arbitrary. Rather they’re grounded in the sense that they’re formed in the con-text of certain experiences. In the experiential context of seeing and feeling and hearing things, I naturally form the

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belief that there are certain physical ob-jects which I am sensing. Thus, my basic beliefs are not arbitrary, but appropriately grounded in experience. There may be no way to prove such beliefs, and yet it’s per-fectly rational to hold them. Such beliefs are thus not merely basic, but properly basic. In the same way, belief in God is for those who seek Him a properly basic belief grounded in their experience of God.”85

The justification for this view lies in the notion of ‘properly basic beliefs’, the idea that there are beliefs which are rationally grounded upon our experience, and which can be rationally kept in the absence of a defeater for it. It is not until Plantinga, though, that there is a subtle defense of this claim with full detail. Drawing from his popular book Knowledge and Christian Belief (2015), Alvin Plantinga (in three much larger and more sophisticated works), developed a way to think about the existence of God from a non-theological standpoint. He begins by arguing that a theistic (not particularly Christian theistic) conception of God can probably have warrant:

“if theistic belief is true, then it seems likely that it does have warrant. For if it is true, then there is indeed such a person as God, a person who has created us in his image (so that we resemble him, among other

85 Ref. “Does God Exist?” Article.

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things, in having the capacity for knowledge), who loves us, who desires that we know and love him, and who is such that it is our end and good to know and love him. But if these things are so, then God would of course intend that we be able to be aware of his presence, and to know something about him. And if that is so, the natural thing to think is that he created us in such a way that we would come to hold such true beliefs as that he is our creator, that we own him obedience and worship, and that he is worthy of wor-ship, that he loves us, and so on. And if that is so, then, further, the natural thing to think is tha the cognitive processes that do produce belief in God are aimed by their designer (God) at producing that be-lief. But then the belief in question will be produced by cognitive faculties function-ing properly according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth: it will there-fore have warrant.”86

Plantinga continues this model and specifies how Christian theism fares here, since

“the point of the A/C model [Aqui-nas/Calvin natural knowledge of God model], of course, is to show how specifi-cally Christian belief—belief, not just in

86 Ref. Knowledge and Christian Belief. Pg. 39.

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God, but in Trinity, incarnation, Christ’s resurrection, atonement, forgiveness of sins, salvation, regeneration, eternal life—can be both reasonable and warranted.”87

To do this, Plantinga gives the following analy-sis:

“…human beings as originally created also dis-played a narrow image: they had extensive and intimate knowledge of God, and the right affec-tions, including gratitude for God’s goodness. They loved and hated what was lovable and hatful; above all, they knew and loved God. Part of the broad image was the sensus divini-tatis.”

Plantinga then goes on to say that human be-ings fell into sin, requiring salvation, and that the narrow image was almost destroyed; fur-ther, he adds that there were cognitive consequences i.e., our inability to really know God and his wonderfulness and our rebellion against him, to which God responded by send-ing Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son who died on the cross so we might be reconciled to God Himself.88 Plantinga concludes that

“By virtue of the internal testimony or witness of the Holy Spirit, we come to see

87 Ibid. 39. 88 Ref. Knowledge and Christian belief. 49.

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the truth of the central Christian affirma-tions.”89

Plantinga offers a model, then, for how a Chris-tian might view non-natural theological ways in which one knows that God exists. There are many other benefits to non-natural theological methods, but this does not mean that natural theological argument have no role (they are helpful in other places perhaps i.e., apologetics). Thus, for the Christian philosopher he or she is now equipped with scholarly work on natural theology and non-natural theological methods of justifying (or warranting) belief in God. It would be a disservice to reject this work on the grounds that many do not agree with it; it is important to engage with the best arguments available, for anything less is simply to not pur-sue truth.

2.5 Experiential Knowledge and Propositional Knowledge: A Brief Commentary

At this point, it is important to draw a funda-mental distinction between two ways of knowing something. One is by virtue of knowing it through or as a proposition. For instance, I might come to know that 2+2=4 in virtue of knowing the proposition “2+2=4 is true”. This we can call propositional knowledge (knowledge of some proposition). This is what is operative in natural theological arguments, namely, they confer a degree of propositional

89 Ref. 49.

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knowledge of God’s existence; however, there is an important, missing aspect of the problem here, namely, experiential knowledge. So, whereas with propositional knowledge what is known is known in virtue of a proposition, what under subjection here is knowing through experience. For instance, I know that my mother loves me not in virtue of her telling me (though that is one way of knowing it), but in virtue of experiencing it. This, to my mind, is perfectly le-gitimate, and a way in which many beliefs are held. This comes up often, too, in philosophical debates; the problem of free-will, indeed, often—not always—be-gins with the assumption that it is introspectively or experientially obvious that we are free and not deter-mined. And, having this experience of freedom, debates are thereafter pursued about whether or not we can give a clear and articulate meaning to this. The question appropriately arises: Why is this dis-tinction relevant to natural theological arguments? There are two reasons why this distinction matters. First of all, if Christianity is true, knowing God does not have to be on the basis of arguments and evidence. (This has already been discussed earlier on). Secondly, natural theological arguments, while conferring a strong degree of propositional knowledge of God’s existence, does not amount to an experience of God Himself. While the arguments can be stepping stones towards such a knowledge, it is not in and of itself sufficient. For instance, it is important to know that God exists; however, that is the begin-ning of the story—not the end. Having God live in

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your heart is a life changing reality and extends be-yond the world of argumentation and dialogue with unbelievers.90 So, while natural theological argu-ments are important, they are not even close to the whole story of the Christian life. Let me make a couple remarks here about the second point. We are often, it seems to me, moved by experiential knowledge and not propositional knowledge. This idea is part in parcel of the way in which I interpret much of the Socratic idea of never doing wrong voluntarily.91 Clear examples make this obvious (and the example is of contemporary concern, too). Suppose you ask a smoker (of cigarettes) to quit smoking because of its horrible and harmful effects. Suppose thereafter you get a “it doesn’t matter, it is all good.” You, in caring for this person, think that they are simply misguided and wrong about their de-cision. In wanting to show that there apathy is wrong-headed, that night—in this hypothetical situ-ation—you go into the smokers bedroom, and attach electrodes into the brain of the subject. Let us sup-pose, then, that while they are dreaming they “experience” (falsely) smoking their life away, and, to their dismay, developing a horrible lung cancer. They experience the horrible struggle to breathe, the heart-broken faces of family members as well as a rigorous conscious thought that things could have been other-wise if they had just stopped smoking earlier on in life. Now, suppose that morning they woke up. Having

90 It is such an experience that even brought WLC to realize

God was more than he imagined. 91 Ref. This can be found in Plato’s Protagoras.

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“experienced” this, it is more probable than not that they—obviously depending on the degree of the in-tensity of the dream—would reasonably desire to quit smoking. The distinction, then, between telling some-one some proposition P, and their experiencing P, is often that the latter is stronger than the former. Let me give some concrete examples. If there is a God, and Christianity is true, there are aspects of the world which are fundamentally real and objective which are not held on a naturalistic framework. For instance, consider what C.S Lewis calls and understands by ‘Joy’:

“And that is why we experience Joy: we yearn, rightly, for that unity which we can never reach except by ceasing to be the sep-arate phenomenal beings called ‘we.’ Joy was not a deception. Its visitations were ra-ther the moments of clearest consciousness we had, when we became aware of our frag-mentary and phantasmal nature and ached for that impossible reunion which would annihilate us or that self-contradictory waking which would reveal, not that we had had, but that we were, a dream.”92

Taken this way, a natural theological argument does not confer Joy—God does inasmuch as the ‘we’ Lewis speaks of is fundamentally a desire and yearn-ing for the Trinity which is not only the source of

92 Surprised by Joy. Pg. 258.

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our existence, but our Eternal home. Consider even Lee Strobel after having assessed the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus:

“After taking that step, I knew from John 1:12 that I had crossed the threshold into a new experience. I had become something different: a child of God, forever adopted into his family through the historical, risen Jesus. Said the apostle Paul, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Cor. 5:17).”93

That catch phrase ‘threshold into a new experience’ is crucial here. It is not merely knowing “Jesus is God” but experiencing that truth in a real, utterly existential way that a secure knowledge and real truth (faith) begins. There are countless other exam-ples of this, and I shall only name some for the sake of listing them (for spatial considerations I will go into no detail). Other examples of experiencing the truth of Christianity and not through natural theo-logical arguments can be experienced through a strong yearning for the divine and its realization through God’s Holy Spirit, play, leisure, aesthetic experiences, Joy, moral experiences, et cetera. This is not even close to an “exhaustive list”; however, it suffices to say that a natural theological argument is

93 Case for Christ. Pg. 364.

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by its very nature limited—but this does not under-mine its legitimacy (just because science has limits, doesn’t mean one ought not do science!).

Summary

In Chapter 2, I presented a very brief account of the history of natural theology (only in outline). I then turned to explain what a natural theological system looks like in full, and attempted to share reasons why it is important for the Christian to do philo-sophical work in light of the work being done by analytic philosophers of religion. I explained Wil-liam Lane Craig’s natural theology, and how it establishes an apologetic for the Christian religion. Thereafter, I discussed three arguments—reason, ontological and axiological—which have been worked on and which have proven to be good philo-sophical argument’s for God’s existence. I then turned to the problem of theological rationalism to which Craig briefly responds and Plantinga develops a model of dealing with this through an epistemic analysis of how we know God i.e., A/C Model. I con-cluded that Christian philosophers have only to benefit from these and other insights analytic philos-ophers of religion have provided. Kevin Scharp pointed out that there are developments that we have learned and it is time we take hold of them and use them. While I agree with his statement, I think that the truths of Christian analytic philosophy are among these developments pace Scharp.94 In the end,

94 Ref. Scharp and Craig debate Ref. Transcript during Scharp’s talk.

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I noted that we are often moved by experiential knowledge and not propositional knowledge (and this is a deficiency of natural theological argu-ments—but not a problematic one).

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Chapter 3

What difference does God make? The Philosophical Atheists of the Past and Present

“What is now decisive against Christianity is our taste, no longer our reasons.”95 -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1888).

“Perhaps it was because a terrible anguish had developed within my soul, occasioned by a circumstance which loomed infinitely larger than my own self: to be precise, it was the dawning convic-tion that in the world at large, nothing mattered.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877).

“Homo homini lupus” (Trans. “Man is a wolf to man”) -Plautus, Asinaria.96

“If a thing makes no difference, it is waste of time to think about it”

-Peter Kreeft, Everything You Wanted to Know about Heaven (1990)97

3.1 The Philosophical Atheists of the Past and Pre-sent

This chapter deals with the following question: Does God matter, even if He exists? This question is fraught with significance as, for instance, one might accept all natural theological arguments as good, well-established arguments but reject that the argu-ments have any force or meaning since, one might argue, it makes no practical difference if there is a

95 Ref. Gay science. Pg. 186. 96 Quoted in Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents

(1930) p. 58. 97 Ref. EYWKH. Pg. 17.

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God. In this chapter, then, I want to use the quote from Nietzsche to guide the paper that is about to follow. If it really is the case that many think it in-significant that God exists, one must explain why this is so. Typically, in the past, atheists have admit-ted the absurdity of life on atheism; however, in our modern world this is radically changing as many now argue that, in fact, life is not absurd on atheism. The typical image of human beings on atheism are, in conjunction with evolution (because “evolution is the only game in town”98 for the nontheist), some-thing like how Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) describes the state of nature in his seminal Leviathan (1651):

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other secu-rity than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as re-quire much force; no knowledge of the face

98 Ref. https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/vir-

tual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/when_faith_and_reason_clash_evolution_and_the_bible.pdf

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of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”99

Not a pretty picture of human beings; but this passage reveals how fundamental this is to Christian philosophy since the question of the significance of the existence of God is at stake here. If, like the logi-cal positivists thought, talk about God was meaningless (I am using ‘meaningless’ equivocally with the same purpose), then natural theological ar-guments are without any success—even if true. So, this chapter will be argumentative and put in the form of an essay. My thesis, then will be that con-temporary attempts to save the objective meaning of life, that is, a mind-independent and ultimate reason why life matters, on an atheistic worldview cannot, in principle, be realized.

So, I will begin by surveying historical atheists on the question of God’s existence, and show how their intellectual honesty was truth-conducive (not that they were right, but they recognized that on atheism, life is absurd). I will then turn to argue that theism ontologically grounds objective meaning. Common phraseology has it that life can be mean-ingful without God; one hears the following as axiomatic: “Life can be perfectly meaningful without

99 Ref. Leviathan pg. 78. http://socserv2.socsci.mcmas-

ter.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hobbes/Leviathan.pdf

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God”, “God is infringes on what I want to make of myself and life”, “There is no need to posit age-old gods who science has buried to make life meaning-ful”. These slogans, while widespread and almost put forth in a dialogue like a knee-jerk reaction merit critical philosophical attention. For one thing, con-sider the following questions: Do intellectually inclined atheists really think this? What does athe-ism really entail? What could possibly (either logically or metaphysically) ground objective mean-ing? For atheists, that is, persons who affirm the proposition that God does not exist, a deflationary approach to meaning is the only possible route, I shall argue and, so, I want to structure my essay as follows. I will begin by laying out what atheists have typically said about meaning, purpose, destiny et cetera, show how atheism itself is consistent with the thoughts of many atheists I will quote i.e., Ber-trand Russell, and show how, in result, contemporary attempts of atheists to save meaning, purpose, value and so on, ultimately fail—and in principle will continue to fail. In the end, I will juxta-pose this worldview with that of the theist and conclude with an insight mathematician and philoso-pher Alexander Pruss makes at the end of his doctoral dissertation Possible Worlds: What they are good for and what they are (2001), namely, that “de-pending on how much we demand from our theory of possibility we can make-do with different ontolo-gies.” My interpretation, and conclusion of the paper, is that depending on what we want from our

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Weltanschauung, we can make do with different on-tologies insofar as the ontology is consistent with what our Weltanschauung entails. Thus, if one wants to pay the price of denying objective meaning, athe-ism as an ontology and Weltanschauung is a plausible option; if not, another route must be taken—and my suggestion is theism.

Biologist Francisco Ayala has noted the fol-

lowing regarding some biological species:

“Examples of ‘cruelty’ involve predators

tearing apart their prey (say, a small mon-

key held alive by a chimpanzee biting large

morsels from its flesh), or parasites de-

stroying the functional organs of their

hosts, but also, and very abundantly, cruel-

ties between organisms of the same

species, even between mates. A well-

known example of this is the female pray-

ing mantis that devours the male after

coitus is completed. A less familiar fact is

that, if she gets the opportunity, the female

praying mantis will eat the head of the

male before mating, which thrashes the

headless male mantis into spasms of ‘sex-

ual frenzy’ that allow the female to connect

his genitalia with hers. In some midges

(tiny flies), the female captures the male as

if as if he were any other prey and injects

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him with her spittle, which starts digest-

ing the male’s innards; the relatively intact

male organs, which are partly protected

from digestion, break off inside the female

and fertilize her. Male cannibalism by their

female mates is known in dozens of cases,

particularly spiders and scorpions.” (Alaya,

199-200).

Ayala concludes, not surprisingly, “the natural world

abounds in ‘cruel’ behaviors.” (200). For atheists and

theists alike, these are facts of nature with no real

moral significance i.e., it might be graphic, but not

immoral; however, the theist and atheist part when

the question turns to human beings: Given the pre-

sent situation—that of human beings existing—are

the aforementioned ‘cruelties’, applied to human be-

ings, of any moral significance? In other words,

engage in a rather disturbing thought experiment

and suppose these things happened to human beings

i.e., a female ripping a male’s head off for selfish sex-

ual desires, on atheism is this really bad, morally

speaking? I want to here turn to evaluate what athe-

ists have typically said in response to questions as

these beginning with the Ancient world.

The 21st century was fraught with socio-polit-

ical strife, and consequent moral catastrophe.

Atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, himself a

philosopher who experienced the horrors of World

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War II, expresses his concern for the lack of values

on atheism, resulting in what seems to be—for

him—a brutally honest answer to the truth of the

matter:

“The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks

it very distressing that God does not exist,

because all possibility of finding values in a

heaven of ideas disappears along with

Him; there can no longer be an a priori

Good, since there is no infinite and perfect

consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it

written that the Good exists, that we must

be honest, that we must not lie; because

the fact is we are on a plane where there

are only men. Dostoevsky said, “If God

didn’t exist, everything would be possible.”

That is the very starting point of existen-

tialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if

God does not exist, and as a result man is

forlorn [a technical term meaning “that

we have to face all the consequences of

[God not existing]”], because neither

within him nor without does he find any-

thing to cling to. He can’t start making

excuses for himself.” (Cahn & Markie,

409).

Here Sartre expresses the atheistic inability to

ground, ontologically, anything beyond the thresh-

old of subjectivity; worse than that, the inability to

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find any meaning, value or purpose. Sartre’s usage of

“cling to” above reveals this ontological gap pre-

cisely: any foundation for values on atheism will

contradict an atheistic axiom, namely, that man is

forlorn (defined above), and therefore even if to “get

on” man devises a set of values, he will not authenti-

cally ground values. Elsewhere, Satre writes that he,

essentially (‘essential’ being vaguely used, as Sartre

would himself object to my using the word ‘essen-

tial’), encapsulates and embodies his own

nothingness (Marino, 369-409). This sense of mean-

inglessness is the essence of the consequences of

atheism. While Sartre admits this results in the crea-

tion of self, meaning and so on, he realizes that “man

is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and out-

side of that there is nothing.” (Cahn & Markie 412).

Albert Camus, the Algerian counterpart of Sartre,

had many similar insights.

Albert Camus wrote philosophical and literary

works (usually the latter with a lot of insights into

the former). Indeed, his writings, while usually pro-

vocative and continental in nature, hit the modern

person as Sartre’s writings did; in other words, it

was an alleged sharp vision of what reality ulti-

mately amounted to. In Camus’ The Outsider (more

accurately translated from the French as The

Stranger), Camus ends the story of a man who, hav-

ing no need for God whatsoever, murders “an Arab”,

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and is sentenced to death. He reflects, after being im-

prisoned and sentenced to death by the guillotine,

that “for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open

to the benign indifference of the universe.” (Camus

120). In other words, the universe, since antithetical

to objective meaning, was of little importance to

him. While this is provocative and non-Nietzschean

in its approach, this amounts to no more than a bio-

graphical fact about the character (indeed, it says

absolutely nothing of reality at all). It is only later

that Camus, in another more philosophically aimed

work The Myth of Sisyphus, that Camus really elab-

orates on this notion of ‘indifference’ in the context

of ‘absurdity’: “The absurd is born of this confronta-

tion between the human need and the unreasonable

silence of the world.” (Camus 26). Like Sartre, Ca-

mus realizes that in the absence of God, the world is

indifferent to the needs of puny, insignificant and

worthless human persons on a purposeless planet. (It

is only later than Camus advocates a cop-out from

this image by re-interpreting the myth of Sisy-

phus100). Indeed, Camus’ views stand in sharp

juxtaposition with that of the philosopher Hans Blu-

menberg’s position regarding “the absolutism of

reality”, in his words, the reality that “man came

close to not having control of the conditions of his

100 Camus begins that life is absurd, and then goes on to argue

that life has a peculiar form of meaning. (Which implies that he re-ally didn’t understand what ‘life is absurd’ meant ref. Pruss’ blog).

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existence and, what is more important, believed that

he simply lacked control of them.” (Blumenberg 4).

On Camus’ view, or at least what follows from Ca-

mus’ premises, is that whether or not man did exist

is but a trivial fact—if we are here we are, and if we

are not, we are not—that is all. To use the relational

scale of ‘it is worse to not be here than to be here’ is

to presuppose a standard of ‘better than/worse than’

which, indeed, cannot exist if God does not exist;

since in Camus’ view God does not exist, Blumen-

berg is certainly incorrect regarding the nature of

the world and human beings’ place in it—human be-

ings have no control over an indifferent reality, and

any attempt to say otherwise is to forget that “after

death the chips are down.” (Camus 55). Similar to

Camus’ theses are that of the German philologist

and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

My interpretation of Nietzsche concurs with

Peter Langford when he writes that “[Nietzsche’s]

philosophy is a treasure trove of disparate insights,

rather than a consistent argument.”101 This view is

not widely rejected, and I think interpreting Nie-

tzsche as “a superb stylist”, “writ[ing] too well for

his own good”102, is a reflection of the fact he “was a

literary rather than an academic philosopher.”103 I

believe—and this is no famous argument—that this

101 Ref. pg. 111. Modern philosophies of human nature. 102 Ref. Basic writings of Nietzsche. Pg. x. 103 Ref. History of Western Philosophy. Russell. Pg. 760.

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is the only sensible interpretation of Nietzsche that

takes account for all of his thinking—while at other

times it is more along the lines of kämpfet froh ein

stolzer Mann.104 As a sort of anecdotal note, I find

myself sympathetic to the characterization of Nie-

tzsche made by William Hubben:

“We are close to a fire when we listen to

him, sensing both the consuming heat and

the blinding light of his spirit. Like Kier-

kegaard, he demands of us passion and

exaltation, and he will be understood only

when we surrender to the magic fireworks

of his extremes and contradictions.”105

Now, I want to present what Nietzsche thought re-

ality was like if there was no God. I think a prelude

to the Genealogy is important if one wants to under-

stand Nietzsche’s project.

Nietzsche’s Genealogy, he writes in his Ecce

Homo (1888), aims to serve as a prelude to “a revalu-

ation of all values.”106 This desire to invert Western

and Christian values might, biographically, be un-

derstood as a product of, broadly, three events in

104 Translated as “Cheerfully fights a proud man”. Ref. Einstein

pg. 625. White House Bureau Translation. 105 Ref. Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche & Kafka, pg. 100. I

am sure that Kierkegaard would argue that we will be unable to un-derstand his and Nietzsche’s work since we live in a passionless age. Ref. The Present Age.

106 Kaufmann, 769.

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Nietzsche’s life. First, Nietzsche’s philological stud-

ies107 as a student at the University of Leipzig and

Bonn, were to shape the focus and direction of his

writings and thoughts. For instance, his emphasis on

the Greek conception of values, plays an immanent

role in his conception of the ‘noble values’. Secondly,

his encounter with the “Schopenhauer-Wagner

‘cult’”108 (the former a pessimist atheist and the latter

a musician) was also to have a large effect on his

thinking. Though Nietzsche was very influenced by

religion when he was young—his father was, after

all, a Lutheran pastor—it is not a grand hypothesis

to suggest that Nietzsche’s experience with the

problem of evil played no role in his academic

thought. For instance, in 1849 (when Nietzsche was

six years old) his father died; also, in his early child-

hood his brother died. Nietzsche himself admits this

struggle and notes the importance of ‘evil’ in his life

as he himself called evil his ‘a priori.’109 While, con-

textually, Nietzsche’s motivation for much of his

107 Nietzsche changed his studies from theology to classical phi-

lology; interestingly enough, Freud was also very knowledgeable of Ancient Greek philosophy like Nietzsche.

108 Kevin R. Hill, Nietzsche: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York, NY: Continuum, 2007), 6.

109 Two notes. First, this was taken from Susan Neiman’s, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy (Woodstock, Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 2015), 205. Secondly, ‘a priori’ (Latin) denotes knowledge prior to experience (how contex-tually Nietzsche’s contention ought to be interpreted I shall not enter into here. But, it is not hasty to argue that for Nietzsche ‘evil’

99

work can be understood with respect to what he ex-

perienced110, the development of his ideas were

largely of the genealogical and philosophical type; at

best the biographical and contextual insights into

Nietzsche’s life reveals motivation to critique West-

ern culture and values in general; this critique of

Western culture and values may be, as Albert Camus

suggested, not a “philosophy of rebellion”, but a

“philosophy on rebellion.”111

There are two presuppositions though, in

seeking to understand Nietzsche’s motivations for a

‘revaluation of all values’; namely, Nietzsche con-

tends that there exists a need to diagnosis modern

society of its ills and that, further, this ill has made

was a primary concern with the Judeo-Christian conception of God—if not a fundamental concern.

110 Interestingly enough, in Ecce Homo (1888) Nietzsche explic-itly notes that he “speak[s] only what he has lived through, not merely of what [he has] thought through” Kaufmann, 796. Also, much of Nietzsche’s Genealogy could be understood if, for instance, one made a case against Nietzsche arguing that he generalized moral judgements from his own time period and extended that to the na-ture of morality as such (as Alasdair Macintyre has). See Macintyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 113.

111 Albert Camus’ commentary in his essay “Metaphysical Re-bellion” in his The Rebel (1951) (translated by Anthony Bower) reproduced in, Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York, NY: Modern Library, 2000), 856.

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man112 a ‘sick animal’.113 The project that Nietzsche

wants to undergo, then, is that of understanding the

modern ills of society through a philological analysis

of the modern human predicament. So, Nietzsche be-

gins to critique society by exploring the foundations

(alleged, foundations—in his view), of morality. The

story in the Genealogy is twofold. First, etymologi-

cally, Nietzsche discovers that the terms “good” and

“bad” conceptually relate to “noble” and “with aristo-

cratic soul.”114 As such, given these conceptual

transformations, he searches the historicity of ‘mo-

rality’ (in his view derivative from the

aforementioned “noble” and “with aristocratic soul”)

and finds that there existed a master/slave moral-

ity.115 In this genealogical story, the ‘masters’ are

synonymous with ‘aristocrats’ and the slaves the

‘Jewish people.’ Secondly, Nietzsche, using geneal-

ogy as a form of critique116, unfolds the story of the

112 I will not adopt ‘gender-neutral’ terms inasmuch as both the

quotes of Nietzsche and Freud are often not in written in this fash-ion; I do not intentionally mean to be gender-bias. In fact, one is best off seeing ‘man’ (when not contextually referring to a male person) as synonymous with ‘mankind.’

113 Kaufmann, 557. 114 Ibid., 464. I am using two words here, Nietzsche offers more

words on the same page. 115 I will use the following terms interchangeably: ‘master’, ‘no-

ble’ and ‘aristocrat.’ (While I would like to be terminologically consistent, primary and secondary works use these terms inter-changeably as well so to avoid confusion I shall make this clear here).

116 This was Chiara Bottici’s point (which Nietzsche himself noted in the Genealogy) in, A Philosophy of Political Myth (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17.

101

‘slave revolt’ oriented by ‘ressentiment’, that is, “an at-

titude to life rather than a specific emotion related to

jealousy”, a French term used, contextually, about

the ‘slave morality’ of the Christians.117 From this,

Nietzsche is able to distinguish the morality of the

slaves and the morality of the aristocrats; the former

inverts the morality of the latter and thus prioritizes

“the wretched…the poor, impotent, lowly…the suf-

fering, deprived, sick, ugly” while “the powerful and

noble are…the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the

godless to all eternity.”118

As decadence spreads socially and mankind

becomes “ashamed of its cruelty”119, “bad conscience”

came into the world through the legal contractual

relationship between creditor and debtor; duty, that

is, obligation, becomes threaded into man’s con-

science and put the creditor in a place of power over

the debtor.120 In discussing the origin of the “bad

conscience”, Nietzsche suggests that as “all in-

stincts…do not discharge themselves outwardly”

what follows is their “turn[ing] inward”, what Nie-

tzsche calls “the internalization1 of man”121 In other

117 Carol Diethe, Historical Dictionary of Nietzscheanism. 2nd ed.

(Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2007), 229. I have un-bolded ‘ascetic priest.’

118 Kaufmann, 470. 119 Ibid., 503. 120 Ibid., 500-501. 121 Ibid., 520. The footnote reads 1 “Verinnerluchung. Cf. Freud.”

102

words, “Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in at-

tacking, in change, in destruction—all this turned

against the possessors of such instincts” which Nie-

tzsche takes to be the “origin of the bad

conscience.””122 More importantly, however, is Nie-

tzsche’s critique of the ‘ascetic ideal’, the will to self-

renunciation and, in Nietzsche’s view, a manifest im-

age of decadence.

For Nietzsche, this self-renunciation is antag-

onistic and antithetical to the “will to power.”123 In

fact, Nietzsche goes farther than this and suggests

that the “ascetic ideal means…that something was

lacking, that man was surrounded by a fearful void—

he did not know how to justify, to account for, to af-

firm himself” and therefore man “suffered from the

problem of his meaning.”124 Understood in this light,

Nietzsche concludes that, independent of an ideal

which provides meaning and self-realization to a

person, man remains a ‘sick animal’ because he has

succumbed to the weak morality, with its figurehead

as the ‘ascetic priest.’ Further than that, Nietzsche’s

122 Ibid., 521. 123 I will not mention the concept of the “will to power” in this

paper asides here inasmuch as it would require work beyond the scope of this paper. Especially because I am not dealing, at least by in large, with his The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Vintage Books) (though the concept itself is placed throughout the corpus—including the Genealogy—of Nietzsche).

124 Ibid., 598.

103

diagnosis of society is ultimately that of the exempli-

fication of decadence, namely, that which is

weakening in culture.125

Nietzsche has a number of what he considers to

be decadent consequences of the slave morality—I

shall share only two. First, Nietzsche alludes to the

noble man exemplifying a sort of carelessness and

superiority towards what he “ought” to do: “To be

capable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even

one’s misdeeds seriously for very long—that is the

sign of strong, full natures.”126 So, the weak man—

exemplifying the weak slave morality—is a result of

the inversion of the noble values (which is an exam-

ple of, for Nietzsche, decadence in modern society).

Nietzsche’s attack on the slave morality has counter-

part implications, however. Since a human being

must reach their potential, and the slave morality is

antithetical to such self-actualization, Nietzsche later

identifies the paradigmatic figure of the noble and

strong man, the “intellectual hero who philosophi-

cally demolishes the chains of logos to open the

125 Diethe, Historical Dictionary of Nietzscheanism, 56. As a lin-

guistic matter, the term ‘decadence’ is closely related to “’degeneration’ [Entartung or sometimes Degenerescenz] and ‘cor-ruption’ [Corruption or Verderbniss].” See Douglas Burnham’s The Nietzsche Dictionary (London, UK and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing 2015), 93.

126 Kaufmann, 475.

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existential possibility of self-creation.”127 Western

culture, as it stands, does not promote nor exemplify

such self-actualization; while it is possible that Nie-

tzsche is generalizing from his historical context128,

it remains an open question whether or not Nie-

tzsche would have wanted society to institutionalize

such a philosophy. So, Nietzsche inherently chal-

lenges Western and Christian morality inasmuch as

these values manifest themselves in culture; by sug-

gesting a ‘revaluation of all values’, Nietzsche

presents his project as that of ultimately showing

Western culture as decadent and weak.

In the Genealogy of Morals (1887), the picture of

humanity Nietzsche depicts is not very pretty, and

indeed it is no surprise that while Nietzsche seemed

optimistic about rejecting all traditional, absolute

values, the price to be paid was not intended:

“This is precisely what the ascetic ideal means: thar something was lacking, that man was surrounded by a fearful void—he did not know how to justify, to account for, to affirm himself; he suffered from the problem of his meaning. He also suffered otherwise, he was in the main a sickly ani-mal: but his problem was not suffering

127 Bryan Metcalfe, “Pedagogy of Mythos” (Doctoral Thesis,

University of Toronto, 2013), 34. 128 Macintyre, 113.

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itself, but that there was no answer to the crying question, “why do I suffer?””129

While Nietzsche might have suggested to his readers that the ascetic ideal could be done away with, and that Christianity was a religion of the weak, he does not recognize the problematic nature of the situation he presents; if there is no God, the question “why do I suffer?” is perfectly meaningful on atheism: the answer is that there is no reason why one suffers—it is a brute fact of existence with no objective value at all. Even if subjective values can be ascribed to it, it will never break the threshold of a legitimately meaningful life. The gap Nietzsche wants to re-open (after the death of the ascetic ideal), brings to light a further problem—the meaningless-ness that is left (if there is no God). It is only a year later, in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (1888), that I think he gets it right. Notice the story Nietzsche presents us:

“The madman. - Haven't you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, 'I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!' Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us?

129 Ref. Basic writings. Genealogy. 598.

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Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? - Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupt-ing the other. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Where is God?' he cried; 'I'll tel1 you! We have killed him - you and I! We are all his murderers. But how did we do this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we mov-ing to? Away from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And backwards, side-wards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and a down? Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Is-n't empty space breathing at us? Hasn't it got colder? Isn't night and more night coming again and again? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-dig-gers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition? - Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the mur-derers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us?

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With what water could we clean our-selves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for our-selves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it? There was never a greater deed - and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now!'”130

It is the death of God (not ontologically, but as an experience and reality in human life), that is consti-tutive of objective meaninglessness. Without God, man is without end, that is, without value, purpose and meaning.131 Nietzsche rightly realized that in the absence of God, life is absurd; there is no reason for existence, and it is only through subjective illu-sions that life becomes even remotely bearable. Nietzsche even extends such a conception into mat-ters of human beings when he argues that

“One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature.”132

130 Ref. the gay science Cambridge edition. Pg. 119-120. 131 Ref. WLC. Reasonable faith 2nd edition. 132 Ref. Portable Nietzsche pg. 42.

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Notice the key words ‘aimless’133 and ‘arbitrary’. These words signify the apparently non-teleological structure of the human mind, and consequently the irrational heart of man.134 It is on an atheistic worldview that all meaning is without foundation; to be more clear—what follows from authentic atheism is no meaning at all, ontologically speaking. Here I think it is appropriate to mention a quick word on Sigmund Freud (1856-1939).

Since there is no God in Freud’s view, he sug-gests that man is nothing but an aggressive, weak and procreative animal.135 At best, human beings have the capacity to learn, dominate and protect themselves from the indifferent nature of reality; but, while for Freud the nature of human beings is that of an instinctual animal, he quotes Plautus from his Asinaria which, I suggest, summarizes his concep-tion of human nature succinctly: homo homini lupus.136 As ‘Man is a wolf to man’, Freud introduces an “original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man”137, namely, the ‘aggression instinct.’ This

133 The notion that on atheism (naturalism and evolution, more

specifically), our cognitive faculties are unreliable has been made into an argument against the rational affirmability of naturalism. See C.S Lewis’ Miracles and Plantinga’s Where the conflict really lies.

134 This is, among other things, sometimes called Nietzsche’s “irrationalism.”

135 While Freud does not have the logical style of ‘If P, then Q’ (‘If no God, man is an animal’), I infer it from the whole of his work (rightly or wrongly—either way it does not affect my argument).

136 Ibid., 24 and 58. ‘Homo homini lupus’ is the Latin for ‘Man is a wolf to man.’

137 Ibid., 69.

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amounts to saying that there is a “primary mutual hostility of human beings” implying that “men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved.”138 While Freud argues that there exists this destructive or ag-gressive instinct, he also mentions what happens to it under the process of civilization, namely, internali-zation.139 So, while the instinct to aggression must find displacement somewhere, it is directed back unto one’s own ego—a problem causing, in Freud’s view, disorder.140 From this, it is manifest that Freud’s conception of human beings, which he takes to be fundamental, exists as a foundation which al-lows him to examine the ills of modern society starting with civilization itself. Thus, since there is no God, man is a dangerous, instinctual animal wrongfully tamed by sociological forces. ‘Meaning’ is just a subjective, useful tool man adopts to get along in a hard, cold world (it means nothing more than what happiness does—perhaps happiness has even more value in Freud’s opinion): “the question of the purpose of human life…does not admit of [a sat-isfactory answer].”141 He then (contradicting himself) writes that “the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle.”142 Notice the structure of the argument: If there is no God, the

138 Ibid., 59 and 58. 139 Ibid., 70. 140 Ibid., 70 and 44. 141 Ref. Civilization. Pg. 22. 142 Ref. Civilization. Pg. 23.

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purpose of life is reducible to pleasure.143 This sub-junctive conditional results in what is called objective meaninglessness. Sure, there is subjective meaning (one has to get along somehow), but ulti-mately the reason why, for instance, altruism is good besides reference to a standard of pleasure (which is, in my view, absurd). Perhaps Nietzsche was right when he urged that if there is no God, then man is not trust worthy, a nice introduction of nihilism into the framework Freud wants to endorse: “The sight of man now makes us weary—what is nihilism today if it is not that?—We are weary of man.”144 Bertrand Russell had much to say on God and meaning, and it did not differ much from that of other historical atheists who preceded him.

Bertrand Russell, regarded as one of the finest philosophers to ever live, admitted clearly the conse-quences of atheism. While it has been objected that one must look at Russell’s works together to under-stand what he thought, I think Russell is quite explicit about his position in his “A Free Man’s Worship”:

“Such, in outline, but even more purpose-less, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man

143 This argument is given by Ref. Bentham (basically) and Mill

(roughly). 144 Basic works of Nietzsche. Pg. 480.

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is the product of causes which had no pre-vision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the out-come of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an indi-vidual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achieve-ment must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation hence-forth be safely built.”145

If there is no God, life is ultimately absurd—full stop. Nothing more, nothing less; God is the founda-tion of meaning and once that foundation is taken away, so is the rest of all man’s loves and aspirations, his take on reality and, more importantly, his mean-ing. Given this view of Russell, it is worth analyzing what current thinkers say about God and meaning

145 I first came across this quote in Reasonable faith 2nd edition,

but I retrieved the citation from Basic Writings of Russell pg. 39.

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because, as we shall see, it is a strange phenomena that they have broken themselves off from the intel-lectual honesty of the philosophers of the past.146 As a sort of nice statement summarizing the views of the “old atheists”, consider a passage from Miguel de Unamuno y Hugo:

146 My discussion of contemporary atheism on meaning is both

limited and not sufficient for a really thorough philosophical analysis (this is for spatial considerations). Here is an example of an atheist—Alex Rosenberg—who accepts the conclusions of atheism: “Is there a God? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck. Does prayer work? Of course not. Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding? Is there free will? Not a chance! What happens when we die? Everything pretty much goes on as before, except us. What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them. Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than be-ing immoral. Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or any-thing else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes. What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strate-gic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it. Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with.” Ref. Alex Rosenberg. The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011. Print. Pg?.

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“Let men think and act as they will, let them console themselves for having been born, let them live as happily as possible in the illusion that all this has a purpose. I don’t propose to advise the poor to submit to the rich, nor to suggest to the rich that they submit to the poor; but rather to preach resignation in everyone, and char-ity toward everyone. For even the rich man must resign himself—to his riches, and to life; and the poor man must show charity—even to the rich. The Social Question? Ignore it, for it is none of our business. So, a new society is on the way, in which there will be neither rich nor poor, in which wealth will be justly di-vided, in which everything will belong to everyone—and so, what then? Won’t this general well-being and comfort lead to even greater tedium and weariness of life?”147

Shifting now to the present day philosophically in-clined atheists.

In Andrew and Robert Stainton’s book Knowledge and Mind (2000)148, they ask the follow-ing question, somewhat rhetorically:

147 Ref. Marino. Pg. 282. 148 Stainton and Brooks argue for their thesis by other argu-

ments; but I think an evaluation of the existentialists argument’s

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“it might be boring to live forever...death sometimes ends great suffering, whether physical pain or mental depression or something else…Some people think that death is really bad. Indeed, they find the prospect of dying to be absolutely terrify-ing...[since] you cannot be reasonably afraid of nothing…there is nothing to be afraid of.”149

They present three ideas:

(1) Everlasting life might be boring

(2) Death might stop great suffering

(3) Some people think death is really terrifying

but since death is a return to nothing, you

cannot be afraid of nothing.

Even if I granted (1)-(3), which I think are all false, this does nothing to show that on atheism, life can be meaningful; rather, all these show is that perhaps our concept of the afterlife (depending on what reli-gion one is discussing) is insufficient or at best without much content. But it is a far inference to say that therefore we are better off if there is no afterlife (this is like inferring that because it is better that there are no spiders, therefore they do not exist, seems to me to be pragmatic, but false). Perhaps they are right—for certain conceptions of the afterlife. Given this vagueness, I think it should be pertinent

reveal that, like theirs, Stainton and Brooks to not work either Ref. Knowledge and Mind pg. 126-132.

149 Ref. Knowledge and Mind pg. 132.

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for the Christian to realize the rich concept of the af-terlife, and understand how vital it is to see it as such. Notice, too, the shift from ontological to psy-chological questions. Perhaps suffering is bad, death is good and the afterlife might be boring—what does this have to do with objective meaning? It is clearly ill-defined what is going on here. Notice, too, that this work is being done on the presupposition that there is no God (and, as we have seen in Chapter 1, this is a highly improbable claim given natural theo-logical arguments as well as reformed epistemological models). Consider what Thomas Nagel, too, says.

In his The Last Word (1997), Thomas Nagel writes the following:

“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God: I don’t want the uni-verse to be like that.”150

Of course, the theism Nagel has in mind (whether he pin points it or not), is not a very rich concept of the-ism. Traditionally, theism has been a view according to which life is infused, inherently, with meaning since God Himself is the Good, and our lives—as

150 Ref. The Last Word. Pg. 130.

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children of His—are intrinsically meaningful be-cause an unsurpassable gift, knowing Him in eternal life, has been bestowed upon us. I will conclude this (all to brief) historical survey of atheists from past to present with what Plantinga has to remind us:

“[Because of original sin] God himself, the very source of my being, can also be a threat. In my prideful desire for autonomy and self-sufficiency I can come to resent the presence of someone upon whom I de-pend for my every breath and by comparison with whom I am small pota-toes indeed. I can therefore come to hate him too. I want to be autonomous, be-holden to no one. Perhaps this is the deepest root of the condition of sin, and a motivation for atheism as wish-fulfill-ment.”151

Alexander Pruss makes at the end of his doc-toral dissertation Possible Worlds: What they are good for and what they are (2001) an important insight, namely, that “depending on how much we demand from our theory of possibility we can make-do with different ontologies.”152 So, depending on what we want from our Weltanschauung, we can make do with different ontologies insofar as the ontology is con-sistent with what our Weltanschauung entails. If atheism is the view that one wants to adopt, they

151 Ref. Knowledge and Christian Belief. Pg. 50. 152 Ref. Possible Worlds Ref. End of the dissertation.

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must give up objective meaning altogether; if that is not enough, and the intuitive, manifest objective meaning of life cannot be given up—theism is the only way out. It is only on theism that life obtains meaning, that the finite world is encompassed by an infinite God of love who wants to enter into a mean-ingful relationship with His little ones; this love is so intense, He even sent His Son to die for us on the cross.

3.2 The Christian God Matters

The reader might wonder here the difference of meaning on theism and Christian theism. I do not have a whole lot to say, but I think there are sub-stantial differences between them. First and foremost, though, it should be noted that on Chris-tian theism, God is a maximally great being, that is, a God who possess certain attributes to the highest logically possible degree i.e., omnipotence (being all-powerful). This is importance since God is not some “pie in the sky” or “sky-daddy”, but a real and loving God who, in His transcendence and loving nature, freely created human beings in His image. The dis-tinctively Christian message of objective meaning is, I think, in the nature of God Himself. Take, for in-stance, the notion of God as a Family in and of Himself. In his First Comes Love (2001), Scott Hahn, a leading Catholic apologist, explores how God in Himself is a Family. Consider what Ronald D. Lawler has to say in the foreword to the book:

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“In the visible family of the Church, as in the family of the Trinity that is God, every person, however broken his or her home and hopes may be been, can find a most dear family. The Church offers strength and light to every small family—that it may with gladness and greatness become what it is made to be: a place of love, shin-ing with the gifts of the God Who enables the family and each of its members to ac-quire varying and wonderful kinds of greatness. Every family, even the weakest and most suffering family, is called to greatness. And it can come to greatness, for it is meant to be, and can be, caught into the great Family of God Himself, Who is the source and joy of greatness for all.”153

This notion is put well by Hahn later in the book:

“God gave us a life in a natural family to lead us to a greater life, a larger family, a supernatural family: a family as big as God.”154

Thus we see how in the very nature of God, God Himself is Love (John 4:8); since love is a great mak-ing property (it is better to love infinitely than love finitely), the concept of God on Christian theism is

153 Ref. First comes love. Forward, xii. 154 Ref. First comes love. Pg. 36.

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one which constitutes objective meaning in a nu-anced and theologically rich way. Since in and of Himself God is a community, it is no surprise that Kierkegaard writes the following:

“All through the ages everyone who has thought deeply over the nature of man has recognised in him this need for commu-nity. How often has this been said and repeated again and again, how often have men cried woe upon the solitary person or portrayed the pain and misery of loneli-ness, how often have men, weary of the corrupting, noisy, confusing life in society, let their thoughts wander out to a solitary place—only to learn again to long for community! Thus man is always turned back to that observation by God, this is the first thought about man. In the busy, teeming crowd, which as community is both too much and too little, man becomes weary of society, but the cure is not in making the discovery that God’s thought was incorrect. No, the cure is precisely to learn all over again the most important thing, to understand oneself in one’s long-ing for community.”155

This longing for community can only be realized, in an infinite sense, if there is an Infinite God to Whom

155 Ref. Works of love. Pg. 153.

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persons can call upon and enter into meaningful re-lationships. I suspect, too, that, like the notion of ‘community’, even in the notion of ‘knowledge’ and ‘contemplation’ (what Pieper groups with philoso-phizing often), has a particular Christian dimension that is enriched because of the concept of God. Alex Pruss says something about the former which think illuminating:

“For the Christian, this reflection might point to the Trinity (God's self-knowledge is essentially shared between three Per-sons who have one intellect), the Incarnation and beatific vision (this self-knowledge is graciously shared with us), and eschatology (our knowledge will, in-deed, last--and even our bodies will rise again, so even the kind of knowledge we have as embodied beings will return). Love is greater than knowledge (in its fullness it includes knowledge but goes beyond it), but knowledge (or at least understanding, and justified true belief) is theologically significant as well. After all, Christ is Logos and Sophia.”156

This is illuminating for two reasons. First, there is a relationship between the Trinity and knowledge; secondly, this relationship makes our philosophical pursuits inherently meaningful—and thus Pieper

156 Ref. Pruss. http://alexanderpruss.blog-

spot.ca/2007/12/knowledge-community-and-eternity.html

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concludes no differently. Consider something similar that Garry DeWeese has to say:

“Christians in all fields—even academia—should be able visibly to demonstrate the value of community. The Proverb says that “iron sharpens iron”; so discussing our work with others will make us better phi-losophers and better writers. But doing so with Christians will (or should) help keep us doing our philosophy “in the bounds of religion alone” (to put a twist on the title of one of Kant’s works). Brothers and sis-ters in Christ who are also in philosophy can help us think through implications, the importance or lack of importance, of start-ing down a particular research path. They can listen as we reach tentative conclu-sions, and even admonish us if it seems we are moving against the credenda of the faith. Such feedback is common in the pro-fession—just think of the popular final footnote of many articles in which the au-thor thanks a number of colleagues. We needn’t and shouldn’t be solitary scholars. More, collaboration in the actual writing process, producing a co-authored work—can be a very fulfilling process.”157

157 http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/DeWeese_Doing_Phi-

losophy_Interview.pdf

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It is this communal effort which is of value, not mere Christians doing philosophy in an unsystematic, dis-unified manner. It is in this sense that even in aca-demia, Christians are to reflect the love of the Trinity. As such, consider, further, what the Catholic monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968) has to say about ‘con-templation’ and our live in the divine life of the Trinity:

“In order to know and love God as He is, we must have God dwelling in us in a new and special way. And so God bridges the infinite distances between Himself and the spirits created to love Him, by supernatu-ral missions of His own Life. The Father, dwelling in the depths of all things and in my own depths, communicates to me His Word and His Spirit, and in these missions I am drawn into His own life and know God in His own Love. My discovery of my identity begins and is perfected in these missions, because it is in them that God Himself, bearing in Himself the secret of who I am, begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self.”158

The key phrase to catch is “dwelling in us in a new and special way”, since it is on Christian theism that our contemplative lives are enriched as God Himself came into our world to teach us to pray, to show us

158 Ref. Seeds of contemplation. Pg. 27.

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what real love ultimately is, and to bless us with an example of a perfect life oriented at God the Father:

“we look for solitude in order to grow there in love for God and in love for other men. We do not go into the desert to es-cape people but to learn how to find them.”159

It is here, and only here, that the example of Jesus comes to mind as He lived a life oriented at God and thereby taught us to live at a life oriented at God; our contemplative lives are infused with meaning and richness because of God Himself, and His bridg-ing the infinite gap between us through His Son. I think Mother Teresa, too, in In the Heart of the World (1997) had much to say of immense value:

“Listen in silence because if your heart is full of other things you cannot hear the voice of God. But when you have listened to the voice of God in the stillness of your heart, then your heart is filled with God. The contemplatives and ascetics of all ages and religions have sought God in the si-lence and solitude of the desert, forest, and mountains. Jesus himself spent forty days in the desert and the mountains, commun-ing for long hours with the Father in the silence of the night.”160

159 Ref. Ibid. p.51. 160 Ref. In the heart of the world. pg. 20-21.

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It is the example of Jesus that objective meaning is understood, captured and made beautiful. To this end, Christian theism gives a much more detailed understanding of what objective meaning really amounts to. Kierkegaard puts this nicely: “wherever love is, there is something infinitely profound.”161 In-deed, it is with Jesus that we see Love Himself in His own Infinite profundity.

If God was somehow deficient, then typical notions like meaning, value and purpose would be without much content; however, if God provides the foundation for meaning in His very nature, we can do nothing but thank Him and respond to His infi-nite love, especially when His infinite loves puts Him on the cross for our sins. It is the Christian God who created us in His image, gave us capacities to enjoy life and the goods it involves, gave us freedom of the will so we might freely love Him, and therefore the oft-quoted, and all too true, phrase should be re-membered when thinking of the distinctiveness of the Christian message of meaning:

“For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16).162

Summary

161 Ref. Works of Love. Pg. 282. 162 I retrieved this quotation here: http://www.catho-

lic.org/bible/book.php?id=50&bible_chapter=3.

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In Chapter 3, we have seen the perspectives of athe-ists historically (philosophical atheists, anyway), as well as contemporary atheists regarding meaning. While there seems to be a sharp division between the two, it is clear that the atheists of the past were correct regarding man’s predicament: without God, there is no objective meaning to life. At the end, I urged that theism is what constitutes objective meaning, since God Himself is the Good and is the foundation of all meaning. I argued, briefly, that Christian theism in particular holds God as the Greatest Conceivable Being, that is, a being who has His attributes to the maximal degree of greatness i.e., all-loving. It is this God—the God of the Bi-ble—that can account for objective meaning but in a more theologically rich sense.

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Chapter 4

Christian Philosophical Projects

“For I love to speak or to hear other speak of philos-ophy; there is the greatest pleasure in that”163

-Plato, The Symposium

4.1 History of Philosophy

The Christian philosopher has to come to terms with the notion that the history of philosophy is by no means wholly Christian. This, though, is no surprise or cause for concern. The Christian philoso-pher, I suggest, has to approach the history of philosophy distinctively and in a rich and insightful way. No doubt this project is difficult given that the history of philosophy is enormous—‘gigantic’ might be a more appropriate word, even if not philosophi-cally appropriate. I think that the Catholic philosopher Frederich Copleston puts it rightly:

“At any rate, we must say that the search for truth is ultimately the search for Abso-lute Truth, God, and even those systems of philosophy which appear to refute this statement, e.g., Historical Materialism, are nevertheless examples of it, for they are all

163 Republic, Jowett, pg. 320.

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seeking, even if unconsciously, even if they would not recognise the fact, the ultimate Ground, the supremely Real. Even if intel-lectual speculation has at times led to bizarre doctrines and monstrous conclu-sions, we cannot but have a certain sympathy for and interest in the struggle of the human intellect to attain Truth.”164

Thus, it is in philosophizing that we attempt, as hu-man beings, to find the answer for our existence and all we find in it. It is no surprise that this sounds all too familiar, for in Aristotle we read no differently: “All men by nature desire to know.”165 So, it is im-portant to see that the Christian philosopher has to work to do in interpreting the history of philosophy through the lens of Christianity. This is but one pro-ject the Christian philosopher can embark on.

4.2 Unifying Sub-Disciplines Within Philosophy

Much philosophy involves tying together in-sights from each sub-discipline of philosophy. Since a detailed analysis of how this works is almost impos-sible, I will give concrete examples (and hopefully my thesis will emerge through them). The unity of these sub-disciplines can be part in parcel, I think, of developing consistency between propositions; that is, having what might be called—more philosophi-cally—doxastic coherence. In another sense, though,

164 Copleston Vol. 1. History of Philosophy pg. 6. 165 Metaphysics. Trans. McKeon. Pg. 689 para. 980a.

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the more important task is consistency between the-ological propositions with philosophical ones. Consider the following for doxastic coherence:

(1) In a set of three objects {x,y,z}, there is no ‘a’.

(2) There is an ‘a’ in the set of three objects

{x,y,z}

Clearly (1) and (2) are inconsistent (given the truth of (1) or (2)—but not both). Often, tying together is-sues within sub-disciplines can be like assessing the consistency of propositions (like how we assessed the consistency of (1) and (2)). Here is a concrete ex-ample (and these examples are purely hypothetical).

(1) An unembodied mind is incoherent (philoso-

phy of mind).

(2) God is an unembodied mind (philosophy of re-

ligion).

Here we can see the importance of seeing the incon-sistency between (1) and (2). Either (1) is true or (2) is (they cannot both be simultaneously).166 So what should we do? Give up one proposition. The ques-tion for the Christian philosopher is: What does Christianity say here? Since obviously in this case (2) is the answer, (1) must be rejected. It is for fur-ther work, then, to show how the notion of an unembodied mind is, in fact, coherent.167 More im-portantly, though, is the consistency between theological and philosophical propositions. Here is a

166 This is the famous law of non-contradiction P & not-P is

equal to a contradiction. 167 And many have done this i.e., Craig, Moreland, Plantinga.

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good example which I think can be detailed quite sufficiently:

(1) The Bible teaches that human beings are inte-

grative beings (i.e., not reducible, but taken as

‘wholes’.

(2) The notion of a human person as integrative is

coherent (philosophical anthropology).

I think it is important that (1) and (2) are seen as consistent (since they are), and that it is the Chris-tian philosophers job to do the duty of delineating how (2) might be established (since it is already jus-tified on theological grounds). J.P Moreland and Scott Rae have done this sort of project in their Body and Soul (2000). They clearly articulate how one might see that a correct philosophical anthropology involves the whole of a person:

“there are forms of dualism regarding the constitution of human persons…These an-thropological dualisms may be divided into three categories: metaphysical, eschatological and axiological.”168

It is an integrative perspective of the human person which should be adopted here; indeed, it is no sur-prise that these views are fundamentally importance since they have ethical relevance:

“Our view of a human person touches vir-tually every debated issue in biomedical

168 Ref. Moreland and Rae. Pg. 20.

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ethics today, from the beginning to the ending edges of life.”169

So, it is vital that we make our theological and philo-sophical propositions consistent. Let me give a non-theological example, and then move on to give a the-ological example. I have in mind here Karl Popper’s critique of Plato’s political theory, an attempt to show that the epistemological principles that Plato adopts results not in justice, but in a dictatorship.

[USE KARL POPPER’S CRITIQUE FROM THE OPEN SOCIETY].

To give now a theological example (con-sistency between philosophical and theological concepts), consider the debate over abstract objects in metaphysics between Peter van Inwagen and Wil-liam Lane Craig.170

Craig and van Inwagen have been undergoing a debate over whether or not abstract objects (eter-nally existing, uncreated entities with no causal powers) i.e., numbers, sets, properties and functions, can be made consistent with what the Bible teaches:

“1 In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God.

169 Ref. Moreland and Rae. Pg. 236. 170 Here is where one can access the debate in full Ref. Van In-

wagen and Craig (on Van Inwagen’s article website—compiled by Andrew Bailey).

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2 He was with God in the beginning.

3 Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him.

4 What has come into being in him was life, life that was the light of men;

5 and light shines in darkness, and dark-ness could not overpower it.”171

Craig thinks that van Inwagen is thoroughly mis-taken here, and ought to revise his position as it is manifestly inconsistent:

“In the prologue of the Gospel of John, the evangelist presents a vision of God as the Creator of all things: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn 1.1-3). God through his Word is responsible for the existence of literally everything other than God himself. Apart from God every existent belongs to the creaturely realm, the class of things which have come into being (geneta), and so owe their existence to God’s creative Word or Reason (logos), who is later identified as Christ (Jn 1.14-

171 Retrieved from: http://www.catholic.org/bi-

ble/book.php?id=50

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18). Jn 1.1-3 is thus fraught with meta-physical significance, for taken prima facie it tells us that God alone exists eter-nally and a se. It entails that there are no objects of any sort which are co-eternal with God and uncreated via the Logos by God.”172

It is clear here that if Craig’s biblical interpretation is correct, van Inwagen is mistaken. Craig turns from a Biblical interpretation to van Inwagen’s “pla-tonism” (the view that there do exist abstract objects) here by directing the discussion to what Christians have historically thought about this ques-tion:

“If confronted by a modem-day Platonist defending an ontology which included causally effete objects which were ageneta and so coetemal with God, they would have rejected such an account as blasphe-mous, since such an account would impugn God's unique aseity and undermine creatio ex nihilo by denying that God is the uni-versal ground of being. The fathers could not therefore exempt such objects from' God's creative power, since He is the sole and all-originating agenetos.”173

172 Retireved here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/god-and-

abstract-objects-oct-2013#ixzz4L6HWPfG6 173 Ref. p.273 full exchange.

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Craig goes on to now address van Inwagen himself:

“I have belabored this point because the grounds of my rejection of Platonism are not philosophical but theological. I press no philosophical objections against Plato-nism; rather, rejecting Quine's epistemological naturalism, I offer theo-logical grounds for thinking Platonism false. I thus find myself in agreement with Prof. van Inwagen, though for different reasons, that the Christian philosopher, at least, "should not believe in abstract ob-jects unless [he] feels rationally compelled by some weighty consideration or argu-ment. ... a philosopher should wish not to be a platonist if it's rationally possible for the informed philosopher not to be a pla-tonist."11 Only if anti-Platonism is rationally impossible to hold, only if there is a rationally compelling argument for Platonism, should the Christian philoso-pher feel tom to abandon his theological commitment to God's being the sole ulti-mate reality. It hardly needs to be said that there is no such argument”174

174 Ref. p. 273. Full exchange. The citation Craig makes here

from van Inwagen “ 11 “ is as follows: Peter van lnwagen, "A Theory of Properties," in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. I, ed. Zimmer-man (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), I07.

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In response, van Inwagen concludes with the following Biblical interpretation and rejection of what Craig had to offer:

“Consider this analogous case. Suppose you heard a shopkeeper say, "What a day! We sold everything in the store." And suppose you replied, "Oh, I don't think you should have sold the counter and the cash register. How are you going to get along without those?" You would (if you got any reply but an odd look) almost certainly get a reply along the lines of, "I wasn't talking about those. They weren't for sale. I meant I sold everything that was for sale." You would simply be being tiresome if you re-sponded by saying, "But you said everything in the store, and they're in the store. If you meant everything in the store that was for sale, why didn't you say that?" In a similar vein, when Jesus said, "For God all things are possible," he wasn't talking about things like making a self-contradictory statement true or changing the past. He was, I presume, talking about things that would be of some interest to those of us who live in the Christian faith and hope. In my view, when we say that God is the creator of all things, we are talking about things like seas and moun-tains and storms and the sun and the moon

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and galaxies and space and time and elec-tromagnetic radiation and neutrinos and dark energy and angels and human souls. I don't think that we mean-at any rate that we have to mean-that he is the creator of abstract objects, of things like propositions and attributes and numbers ... and shapes.”175

It is here that I want to draw attention (without get-ting into this quite rigorous debate!). Craig and van Inwagen both agree on the same point: Any philo-sophical understanding here has to be logically consistent with theological notions i.e., God’s exist-ence as the sole ultimate reality. Therefore, if one wants to embark on doing Christian philosophy, it is important to (1) always keep in mind the Biblical text (and other sources for interpretation)176 and (2) position oneself to defend only theologically defensi-ble propositions.177

4.3 Modern Philosophical Problems and their Rele-vance to Christian Philosophy

I hope by now the relationship between the sub-disciplines in philosophy, alongside the relation-ship between theological and philosophical propositions are clear. I think it is important,

175 Ref. Van Inwagen’s “Did God create shapes?” Pg. 290. 176 i.e., the Magisterium. 177 If you are interested in God and abstract objects, See Ref.

Gould’s “Six Views on God and Abstract Objects.”

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though, to extend these notions into a directed anal-ysis of modern philosophical problems and their relevance to Christian philosophy. I think the best place to begin is in the philosophy of mind, since much of the work being done is from a secular per-spective (and thus much work is needed from Christian philosophers).178 Alvin Plantinga has writ-ten the following which, I think, should be axiomatic for any understanding of contemporary philosophy of mind: “From a theistic point of view, much of what goes on [regarding the science of mind] can be seen as misguided.”179 Let me begin with a prime ex-ample, the notion of ‘mind’ when evaluating personhood i.e., what it means—philosophically—to be a human being. After discussing this, I then want to give an example (which is, I think, not given of-ten) of how the Christian philosopher can work on modern philosophical problems, namely, that of the philosophy of education. Let us begin with a histori-cal example, namely, that of empiricist philosopher David Hume (1711-1776):

“But father, what must become of all our particular perceptions upon this hypothe-sis? All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable from one another, and may be separately consider’d,

178 Moreland does this ref. Consciousness and the existence of

God. 179 Ref. Christian scholarship: need. Lecture notes here: https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_li-

brary/articles/plantinga_alvin/christian_scholarship_need.pdf.

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and may exist separately, and have no need of anything to support their exist-ence. After what manner, therefore, do they belong to the self; and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I en-ter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular per-ception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception. When my perceptions are re-mov’d for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I sensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my per-ceptions remov’d by death, and cou’d I neither think, not feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou’d be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If any one upon serious and unprejudic’d reflexion, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are es-sentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I

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am certain there is no such principle in me.”180

This passage is illuminating for two reasons. First, it asks the following question: Are human beings bun-dles of experience which constantly change over time? Secondly, It presses the Christian theist to ac-count for the apparent non-existence of the single, unified ‘self.’ With regard to question one, it is, of course, without hesitation that Christianity teaches there is a self (and that given Christian theism, it fol-lows that there is one).181 Thus, the second question arises: Is the notion of a unified ‘self’ coherent, and is it the correct model of human personhood? Since the purpose of this book is not to introduce Biblical exe-gesis (though this is always valuable), but Christian philosophy, I will answer both questions accordingly.

Regarding the first question, the question re-ally amounts to asking: Is perception of oneself sufficient for a ‘self’? Hume seems to be saying no in the above passage (his view is sometimes called the “bundle theory of the self”, which amount so saying that the fiction ‘self’ is really a collection of experi-ences). While I agree that with Hume on atheism there is no self, if one argued contrarily, that there was a self (and it was nothing more than a collection of experiences), I think this would be inconsistent

180 Ref. Treatise of human nature. Pg. 252. 181 J.P Moreland gives Biblical (from both Old and New Testa-

ment) evidence for this Ref. pg. 27-40 Body & Soul.

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with Christian teachings. To this effect, I want to ar-gue against Natasha Germana’s published article “Experiencing Mortality: The Possibility of Retain-ing Personal Identity in Resurrection” (2015), which does try to argue that a phenomenological under-standing of the self is sufficient to constitute the self. The argument, to this effect, suggests that if there is an afterlife, it is ultimately going to be a different person entering into it since the “shift of reality” (from earthly life to eternal life) is sufficient to change the person in question ontologically. This, obviously, is not Christian teaching; on Christianity, God creates human persons in His image who do not become “different people” over time. While people change (no doubt they do i.e., I was once a lot more immature than I am now—though I think many would urge that this is debatable), the philosophical question is as follows: Do people change ontologically over time? It is here that I want to share what I think about her essay (in a formal style).

In her essay “Experiencing Mortality: The Possibility of Retaining Personal Identity in Resur-rection” (2015), Natasha Germana (hereafter Natasha) argues that taking axiomatic a phenomeno-logical criterion of personal identity, human persons who exist in the actual spatiotemporal world cannot continue to exist as the same person if that person were to exist in the afterlife.182 There would be, in

182 Two preliminary comments. First, the ‘afterlife’ is most

closely associated with the Christian conception of the afterlife. Sec-ondly, I will use the term ‘spatiotemporal world’ and not her term

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effect, two people—one before death and one after. She begins with what she calls the “phenomenologi-cal approach” to defining personal identity, an approach suggesting that personal identity is “in-formed through consciousness as human being with a soul and body in a (real or perceived) spatiotem-poral reality” implying that “after death [a person] would be altered in a way that would not allow a person to remain the same person in the time before their death.” (25, 27).183 While this thesis brings to light many interesting issues regarding personal identity, I suggest that under plausible assumptions her axiomatic presupposition, namely, a phenomeno-logical approach to personal identity, plausibly makes her view improbable. So, first, I will begin by introducing the problem of personal identity through providing an exegesis of her argument. Then, I will criticize her argument in a two-fold manner. First, I will argue that it is plausible that perception of subjectively experiencing conscious-ness is not a plausible model of personal identity because it fails to distinguish consciousness and the self, the latter being more plausibly the source of personal identity (I argue this through a thought ex-periment). Secondly, I run a parallel phenomenological argument which suggests that the

‘spatiotemporal reality’ (25-27) because ‘reality’ often is assumed to be ‘that which exists’ (and on a theistic worldview the spatiotem-poral world is not all that exists—the supernatural exists on a theistic framework).

183 Throughout the essay I will write the page number(s) beside any quotation instead of footnoting each quotation.

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data of consciousness suggests that persons are a self which is the possessor of conscious experiences and which is continuous independent of experiences or perceptions of any sort. I conclude that Natasha’s model of personal identity and its counterpart impli-cation of a person not being able to exist as the same person in the afterlife, inasmuch as it begins with her particular phenomenological criterion, is plausibly false.

What does it mean to be the same person at some time t1 and another time t2? In other words, if there is some subject of experience i.e., a person, what makes that person the same throughout time (granting the ontology of time also)? This is the heart of the problem of personal identity, namely, ac-counting for what constitutes a person’s continuity or sameness through time. Natasha rejects ‘anticipation of a future self’ and ‘memory’ as “wholly sufficient measurement[s]” of personal identity and argues that they are minimally “constitutive parts to the particular phenomenological view of personal iden-tity” (25, 26). They are at best necessary but not sufficient conditions for personal identity. Personal identity, then, becomes “rooted in a person’s subjec-tive experiences of consciousness that emerges awareness of past memories and awareness of poten-tial futures, specifically as they relate to a real or perceived mortal reality” (26). Thus, by way of im-plication, the soul or body does not form personal identity; rather, it is through “a person’s conscious experiences of the intersections and interrelations

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between soul, body, and a spatiotemporal reality.” (26). So, it is through a unified mortal and spatio-temporal existence by which a person’s personal identity is constituted and therefore the continuity of this perception is sufficient for sameness over time.

While her argument begins with a phenome-nological criterion of personal identity, it is worth drawing skepticism to her argument by analyzing what it means to be identical. Specifically, what does it mean for x and y to be the same (presumably if a person P is to be the same person at t1 and t2 then it follows that there must be a reason for their being the same at both moments of time).184 Leibniz’ law of the indiscernibility of identicals might be helpful in analytically disentangling the concept of continuity or sameness:

(x)(y)[(x=y)(P)(Px ↔ Py)]185

This law states that all properties that x has y must have in order for x and y to genuinely be the same thing. So, if there is a property x has that y does not have (and conversely), then it follows that x and y are not the same thing. What follows is that “if we can find one thing true of x that is not true of y or

184 Throughout the essay I will use the abbreviation ‘P’ to refer

to a person (any person i.e., Emily), and another person P* (some other person).

185 J.P Moreland and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foun-dations for a Christian Worldview. (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 194.

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vice versa, then x is not identical to y.”186 So, in Na-tasha’s view the “shift in reality” (27) i.e., death and the following afterlife, is sufficient for a person los-ing their personal identity and becoming someone else. From this, it seems that the following state of affairs obtains: P is P iff P does not endure a “shift in reality” such that P becomes P*. In other words, a “shift in reality” is fundamentally detrimental to P’s personal identity and, thus, an afterlife, if it is to be considered a “shift in reality”, compromises such an identity.

I am skeptical to this premise that a “shift in reality” is sufficient to make P a different person, say, P*. Natasha’s argument relies on perception of oneself and the world as constitutive of, and sufficient for, the persistence of oneself over time.187 I shall give two reasons why I regard this as probably false.188 First, it is not at all clear why perception of

186 Moreland and Craig, 194. 187 I will here omit ‘memory’ and ‘anticipation of a future self’

as they are at best irrelevant to my argument (and given that she rejects that they in and of themselves constitute personal identity).

188 There are more reasons why I find this thesis implausible. I would lodge an argument against this structurally similar to the same argument that could be given against the existentialist phra-seology “existence precedes essence”; if perception of subjective experiences of consciousness is necessary for continuity of identity, then it follows that not perceiving those experiences is equivalent to not remaining that person. What about when one is sleeping? Surely one is not perceiving subjective experiences of consciousness (at least fully consciously) and thus it is absurd to think that the sleep-ing person is somehow not the same person as they are when awake. Though it might be responded that all things being equal a person with a body and soul in a spatiotemporal reality remains constant

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oneself (body and soul) and the world is sufficient for personal identity. For example, consider an im-portant paragraph around the end of Natasha’s essay:

“if a person resurrected in an afterlife is the same person as they were in their mor-tal life in that their personal identity is still formed through a conscious awareness of the relationship between soul, body (now “glorified”) and a real or perceived (now “immaterial”) reality, then they would no longer be the same person – their perception of their self (altered in the afterlife) in relation to a celestial afterlife (a reality unlike and perhaps unimaginable from the spatiotemporal reality of the mor-tal world) would no longer be identical to their mortal self. (27, italics mine).189

insofar as that person remains in that reality, I find this inadequate. Perceptions (which has not been defined by Natasha), if they are taken to be interpreted lightly as one’s ‘conception’ or ‘interpreta-tion’ of something, change; if they change, then it follows that the continuity problem of personal identity remains.

189 I have two comments to make here. First, if Natasha’s argu-ment is that perception of the body and spatiotemporal world are necessary/sufficient conditions for identity, I take it to be the case that even one of these changing i.e., the body or the spatiotemporal world, constitutes a different person. From this presupposition, I will argue that the argument against the “shift in reality” as consti-tutive of personal identity also applies to perception of the body and soul. (In all cases, so my argument goes, perception isn’t enough to constitute personal identity). Secondly, I shall take the terms “glori-fied” and “immaterial reality” and “a place unbounded by space and

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In other words, the “shift in reality” is ulti-mately a shift into a different mode of being where non-spatiotemporality is what the glorified body ex-ists in; this different mode implies a different perception and therefore constitutes a different per-son. Her argument could be modelled as follows:

time” (27) as she conceives of them. I shall not dispute this inasmuch as it is a theological debate (which, though I am more than willing to enter, the scope of the paper does not allow). A formal comment here, though, ought to be made. The Christian conception of the af-terlife is not a continuity into some ‘place’; rather, eternal life is existing in the presence of God, knowing and enjoying Him for-ever—in the Christian tradition, this, and only this, is the ultimate fulfillment of human existence. It is interesting that Natasha argues for the ontology of the soul (or self) but never offers an explanation of its ontology. In my view, it seems that the probability of the soul existing is higher on theism than on naturalism; if this holds, then it is not implausible to suggest that God could withhold the person’s soul before and after death (which constitutes personal identity). It also seems implausible to suggest that God would create human per-sons who He loves and made in His image who would eventually become, ontologically, different people in the afterlife. Although Na-tasha explicitly states that in her essay she won’t (and did not) consider “questions of God’s existence, powers, or methodologies” (27), this seems to beg the question against theism of any sort. In fact, on theism generally, it is God who sustains everything in being (including the human person’s soul). It seems that if questions of God’s powers (formally His ‘omnipotence’) were considered, a wholly different conclusion follows; the soul, and not perception of self, body and reality, is what constitutes personal identity. To dis-miss God’s—even possible—role here is to dismiss an important insight and implication into personal identity.

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Spatiotemporal Reality Perception 1 i.e., body, self and spatiotemporal world P

Non-spatiotemporal Reality Perception 2 i.e.,

body self and non-spatiotemporal world P*

The main contention is that perception is conducive to constituting personal identity. This, in my view, conflates the self with consciousness. An examination of consciousness, I suggest, reveals this conflation. Conscious experiences are irreducibly subjective ex-periences of a person. As such, persons have conscious experiences i.e., consciousness without a subject is plausibly modelled as incoherent.190 Now, so far as Natasha’s argument goes, experiences of subjective consciousness (of self, body and world) are part of the formation of personal identity; however, that conscious perception could constitute personal iden-tity seems metaphysically suspicious. It seems that it is not that the perception of conscious experiences themselves that constitute personal identity but, ra-ther, the person (or self) him or herself who constitutes the personal identity (i.e., sameness over time). A basic thought experiment makes this plausible:

Suppose you are approaching a brown table and in three different moments of introspection you attend to your own awarenesses. At time t1 you are five feet from the table and you experience a slight pain in your foot (P1), a certain light brown table

190 This is a view in the philosophy of mind known as

panpsychism.

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sensation from a specific place in the room (S1) and a specific thought that the table seems odd (T1). A mo-ment later at t2 when you are three feet from the table you experience a feeling of warmth (F1) from a heater, a different table sensation (S2) with a differ-ent shape and slightly different shade of brown than that of S1, and a new thought that the table reminds you of your childhood desk (T2). Finally, a few sec-onds later, t3, you feel a desire to have the table (D1), a new table sensation from one foot away (S3) and a new thought that you could buy it for less than twenty-five dollars (T3).

This thought experiment can be modelled as follows:

“original position Table

{P1, S1, T1} {F1, S2, T2} {D1, S3, T3}

I1 I2 I3

I1=I2=I3 myself”191

The analysis shows with plausibility that alt-hough experiences are unified by consciousness, it does not follow that personal identity exists in virtue of the perception of subjective experiences of con-sciousness. Insofar as throughout some distinguished moments in time t1-t3 experiences, say

191 Moreland and Craig, 293.

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e1-e3, are experienced, it is not in virtue of the per-ception of those conscious experiences that personal identity is constituted. But, the inevitable question arises, what, then, constitutes personal identity if not per-ceptions of subjective experiences of consciousness? In my view, it is the substantial soul which is sufficient for constituting personal identity inasmuch as the hu-man person is a temporary body and soul conjunction (temporary with respect to the soul leaving the body after death). However, a defense of this thesis lies beyond the scope of the paper. I shall now move to another argument against Natasha’s thesis.

Natasha essentially thinks that the continuity of perception of subjective experiences of conscious-ness i.e., of body, self and world, are necessarily conducive to forming personal identity. However, following the first objection to Natasha’s argument, a counter phenomenological argument can be given in response. It seems that introspection does not confer the knowledge that one’s perception of sub-jectively experiencing consciousness constitutes personal identity; rather, “[in introspection] you are simply aware that you are not your body or a group of experiences” and that “you are the self that owns and unifies your experiences at each moment of time and that you are the same self that endures through time.”192 So, it is conceivable that in a different se-quence or succession of experiences i.e., a “shift in reality”, or in an entirely different form of reality,

192 Moreland and Craig, 293.

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my personhood would be continuous (that is, I would remain the same) while my experiences (and possibly my subjective conscious perception of those experiences) change. If the person, and not the per-ception, is the source of personal identity, the person who dies and enters into the afterlife, no matter how obscure and/or different it is from the spatiotem-poral order of things will be the same person.

I have argued that Natasha’s thesis that the phenomenological criterion of personal identity, namely, the criterion that perception of self, body and spatiotemporal world constitute personal iden-tity, does not adequately capture the relationship between perception and ontology and the phenome-nology of sameness over time and is therefore plausibly false. While I have not formally offered a view of personal identity in this paper—insofar as it lies beyond the scope of this paper—in my own per-sonal view, the substantial soul is what possesses and constitutes personal identity. However, while personal identity is an important philosophical issue, it is, more importantly, a theological issue. If the soul exists and constitutes personal identity, it is a meaningful question to ask whether or not it will eventually continue to exist in the afterlife i.e., the Christian conception of the afterlife. If the soul does continue to exist, then the question of personal iden-tity is crucial both phenomenologically and metaphysically—perhaps even existentially.

So, given that a phenomenological criterion of personal identity simply does not work, what is the

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Christian philosopher to say in response? I think that the Christian philosopher has at his or her dis-posal many good arguments for the soul, its persistence over time and so forth.193 For instance, consider just one argument:

(1) The law of identity: If x is identical to y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa. (2) I can strongly conceive of myself as ex-isting disembodied. (For example, I have no difficulty believing that out-of-body near-death experiences are possible; that is, they could be true.) (3) If I can strongly conceive of some states of affairs S (e.g., my disembodied ex-istence) that S possibly obtains, then I have good grounds for believing that S is possible. (4) Therefore, I have good grounds for be-lieving of myself that it is possible for me to exist and be disembodied. (5) If some entity x (for example, my self) is such that it is possible for x to exist without y (for example, my brain or body), then (i) x (my self) is not identical to y (my brain or body) and (ii) y (my brain or body) is not essential to x (me). (6) My body (or brain) is not such that it is

193 As a funny fact; Schopenhauer was said to say that radical

materialism was “the philosophy of the subject who forgot to take account of himself.” Ref. Popper’s The Self and Its Brain. Pg. 207.

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possible to exist disembodied, i.e., my body (or brain) is essentially physical. (7) Therefore, I have good grounds for be-lieving of myself that I am not identical to my body (or brain) and that my physical body is not essential to me.194

The work for the Christian philosopher, is, then to defend arguments such as these (if they work) and if it doesn’t, find other arguments which do work and can be rationally supported with plausible premises. Richard Swinburne, I think, has published the strongest defense of substance dualism offered today. Indeed, his book Mind, Brain and Free Will (2013)195 is, while thoroughly analytic and difficult, an at-tempt at showing that humans are more than mere physical beings. What is interesting, though, is the emergence of even non-theistic thinkers realizing that there is more to the physical world than what science tells us (and this will shift the discussion into questions of science and religion). Hence, Thomas Nagel:

“If we continue to assume that we are parts of the physical world and that the evolutionary process that brought us into existence is part of its history, then some-thing must be added to the physical conception of the natural order that allows

194 Moreland, the soul. Pg. 125-126. 195 Ref. Mind Brain and Free Will Swinburne.

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us to explain how it can give rise to organ-isms that are more than physical.”196

Further than this, work in the philosophy of mind cannot be kept away from questions of the value of human persons. For instance, in questions regarding human persons being of mere instrumental or intrin-sic value. To understand this distinction, consider the following:

“To take an extreme example, human slaves are instrumentally valuable to their masters. In familiar systems of slavery, slaves constitute a form of wealth owned by their masters. They can be traded or sold in order to secure other things that the masters desire. They can also be forced to produce assets, such as sugar or cotton crops, that their masters can then trade or sell. In such ways, a slave is a mere instru-ment of the master’s will. But human slaves also have value that is intrinsic to them as persons and distinct from their in-strumental value to their masters.”197

The Christian philosopher, then, answers this ques-tion in reference to what Christianity teaches, namely, that human beings are not instrumentally

196 Ref. Nagel. Mind & Cosmos. Pg. 46. 197 Ref. Quinn, Phillip L. (2007). From “On the Intrinsic Value

of Human Persons.” Persons: Human and Divine, p.237

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valuable, but intrinsically valuable. Thus, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804):

“Now I say: man and generally any ra-tional being exists as an end in himself, not merely a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other ra-tional beings, must always be regarded at the same time as an end.”198

What is interesting, too, is that the Christian philosopher has at his or disposal the ability to given account of the value of the body and the soul. Since the soul is constitutive of the human essence, consider what could be said of the body:

“Matter, which keeps souls apart, brings them together. It enables each of us to have an ‘outside’ as well as an ‘inside’, so that what are acts of will and thought for you are noises and glances for me; you are enabled not only to be, but to appear: and hence I have the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”199

So, the Christian philosopher has a non-reductive, explanatory basis for solving philosophical prob-lems. To give another example of where the

198 Kant, Immanuel. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of

Morals. (New York: Dover), p. 45 199 Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain, found in The Complete C.S.

Lewis Signature Classics. (New York: HarperCollins), p.563.

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Christian philosopher should work on is in the realm of epistemology.200 Since this book would be mini-mally four times long if I lingered on about epistemic notions, epistemological frameworks and the history of epistemology, I will specify: Christian philosophers should work to, for instance, refute sci-entism, the view that the only source of knowledge is scientific. Consider some ways in which one might go about rejecting it. To begin, consider a non-theist on the scientism of Alex Rosenberg:

“Rosenberg thinks that science, econom-ics, the social sciences (not to mention literature, the arts, and his own field of philosophy) are all “stories” that may en-tertain us, but that should by no means be taken seriously. He doesn’t seem to realise that science — not to mention his very book — also tells stories (some excellent and grounded in our best understanding of facts, others not so much), because that is the way human beings communicate knowledge and achieve understanding. Science is the right type of story if you want to know about cosmology, but not if you want to learn logic.”201

So, science is not the only source of knowledge; there are other forms of knowledge and such a

200 In ACP Plantinga gives examples similar to mine. 201 Pigliucci, Massimo. (2012). Is science all you need?. The Phi-

losophers’ Magazine, (57), 111-112.

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reductionistic program ultimately undercuts it-self. Consider, too, the argument of Catholic philosopher Douglas McManaman:

“A final difficulty with reductionistic scien-tism is the following: I perceive an apple, and I see that it is large, solid, of a certain size, weight, and position in space, etc. But the apple's quantifiable aspects – which alone are objective and real, according to scientism – are perceived by me through my perception of the apple's qualities, that is, its color, texture, in short, sense quali-ties. If my perception of these qualities is mere projection, thus appearance, that is, if the qualities are nothing other than objec-tive neurological activity, then my perception of the thing's quantifiable as-pects (size, shape, position in space, weight, etc.) is mere appearance as well. Hence, there is no objective world at all. To be is to be perceived. The world exists only when I perceive it.”

To which he concludes

“reductionistic scientism leads to the con-clusion that there is ultimately no mind, and at the same time, there is no objective world outside the mind. The world is in-side the mind, and yet there is no mind in

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which the world can exist. Ultimately, nothing exists.”202

The Christian philosopher’s work on epistemology, then, ought to address current theories of knowledge, critique them from their perspective, and think out their own epistemic systems. This is a pro-ject that Alvin Planting has worked on extensively.203 To now move on to how Christian philosophers might work on the philosophy of edu-cation.

The best example of how Christian philoso-phers should work on the philosophy of education is, in my view, manifestly shown by Bryan Metcalfe, in his doctoral dissertation Pedagogy of Mythos (2013).204

While there is much to say about Metcalfe’s Blumenbergian understanding of mythos and logos (myth and reason), I want to highlight an important, practical aspect of his dissertation and contextualize it into the framework of Christian philosophy. But first let me say a word about the doctorate in general first. In Pedagogy of Mythos (2013), Metcalfe takes the perspective of German philosopher and intellec-tual historian Hans Blumenberg in Blumenberg’s

202 McManaman, Douglas. "Why Scientism Is False." Why Sci-

entism Is False. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2014. <http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/science/scientism/why-scientism-is-false.html>.

203 Ref. WCD, WPF and WCB. 204 Ref. bibliographic information: U of T, 2013, published.

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Work on Myth. Metcalfe, in pursuing the topic of con-temporary socio-political myths in education, took the Blumeberg’s perspective that myth and reason—in a non-exclusive sense—are important modes of symbolic orientation in the world, and need to be embraced; however, since this ‘symbolic orientation’ has amoral properties in and of itself, it is the mani-festations of the myths themselves which have moral properties i.e., socio-political myths. While Metcalfe identifies these socio-political myths—especially the neoliberal and meritocratic myths—vigilantly in the contemporary educational system in Canada—espe-cially in Canadian high schools—he makes a perceptive anecdotal remark which is a nice entry point into Christian philosophy of education.

“For instance, as a teacher in a publicly funded Catholic secondary school, I have noticed that there is a significant tension between Catholicism’s embrace of altruism and equality rooted in a collective and spiritual struggle for social justice and a neoliberal myth that has entered into the narrative goals of my school that stresses mass, individual competition for grades, consumerism, and the sorting of students into hierarchical classes.”205

Thus, for Metcalfe, he identifies how these myths erode, morally, the education system and the need for a clear understanding of how and why this moral

205 Ref. pg. 204.

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deterioration occurs. He comments further, noting the meta-educational, namely, sociological, aspect of the problem:

“We have undoubtedly created highly ad-vanced economic societies with highly trained and productive citizens who have more consumer goods than ever could have been imagined a short time ago. We have done so, however, without relieving the suffering, exploitation, and oppression of millions of people in both our own re-spective societies and throughout the world. We also have done so, in many cases, on the backs of those who have had to sacrifice their land, resources, basic hu-man rights, and lives to ensure homo economicus can maximize our wants and needs.”206

To clarify the concept of homo economicus, consider a model Metcalfe employs in the context of discuss-ing the neoliberal myth:

i. What should we make of ourselves? Answer: A materially affluent group of individuals.

ii. ii. How should we live? Answer: As self-inter-ested, utility-maximizing

206 Ref. pg. 204.

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consumers and produc-ers.

iii. iii. What should we do? Answer: Rationally max-imize our individual utility.

iv. iv. What kind of person should we become? An-swer: Homo economicus.

This philosophical anthropology of ‘homo eco-nomicus’ is at its fundamental core antithetical to the Christian teaching of human beings; it is therefore incumbent that the Christian philosopher realizes that not only is there a decaying philosophical an-thropology, but that this virus is spreading and, if I may employ some hyperbolic terms, claiming its dominance and superiority in contemporary educa-tional institutions. Having had Metcalfe as a high school teacher, I am painfully aware of the truth of his statements: However, this is an important in-sight, too, into Christian philosophy (which will be pursued much more later), namely, that Christian philosophers need to work on these moral problems in the context of the education system itself—not merely in academic journals.

Metcalfe’s method in Pedagogy of Mythos is a largely recognized method in philosophy, namely, a historical background of the subject i.e., myth, some historical considerations i.e., how romantics, En-lightenment thinkers and Nietzsche interpreted myth, a shift to the contemporary scene and how the

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problem persists, et cetera. However, it is this form of historical-philosophical analysis that is needed desperately in the modern world. Without this sort of conceptual and historical clarity, the problems we face—which appear to be abstract problems—are grounded in some external object—even if imagi-nary i.e., false philosophical anthropologies. It is this sort of conceptual digging that Metcalfe employs and is able to identify the problems manifest in the contemporary educational system. While more is to be done (and he rightly recognizes this), the steps taken by Metcalfe are the conceptual foundation of action. It is for the Christian philosopher of educa-tion, then, to merge an understand of a Christian anthropology into the context of education—after all, education concerns the whole of a human be-ing.207

207 Ref. Leisure. Pg. (find it). As an anecdote, having spent

many days after school with Metcalfe discussing—admittedly very difficult ideas—I have always found the man an example of a Chris-tian philosopher—or at any rate a mad philosopher. I would explain my experience with him as WLC explained his exprience with Plantinga: “Well, I think my favorite philosopher is Alvin Plantinga. I have just been so impressed by both the man and his work. He is on the one hand just a genius, his style of doing philos-ophy is so careful and so clean, so analytical. And every issue that he's touched he's made a major contribution…And it just seems that every area he touches he does bring genuinely fresh insights to topics that have been discussed and rediscussed for hundreds of years. So I feel that the man is truly one of the great philoso-phers…And it's a privilege to be alive and working in this discipline at a time when this man is alive and working. And so he is certainly my favorite philosopher in terms of his work. But I

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I think it is appropriate to now, having dis-cussed the relationship between the Christian philosopher and modern philosophical problems, to turn to issues between science and religion, and the Christian philosopher’s role here.

4.4 Science and Christianity: A Quick Word on Mir-acles

The debates between science and religion are seemingly endless. This, though, is no reason for panic; just as scientists do not despair at not having a quantum theory of gravity, so the Christian philos-opher ought not worry about science and religion conflicts. Consider the following areas:

(1) Physics

(2) Biology

(3) Cosmology

(4) Neuroscience

These three areas of science have caught a lot of at-tention to philosophers in recent decades; I suspect that with further investigations, models for framing the data and more conceptual analysis, there will be interesting results of science. The question arises:

have to say that Plantinga is also incredibly gracious. He exempli-fies the Christian life. He's humble, he is kind, he is charitable toward others with whom he disagrees, he's orthodox in his theol-ogy. He really does exemplify Christian character and virtues.” Ref. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dr-craigs-favorite-philoso-pher-debate-and-books#ixzz4PBsQCURt. As a side note, see also Maritain ref. Education at the Crossroads.

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Are there perspectives in (1)-(4) which are incon-sistent with Christianity? In my view, no. Of course there are perspectives without much evidence which are inconsistent i.e., cyclic universe models.208 But the real question is more specific: Is there any evi-dence in (1)-(4) that is inconsistent (or minimally threatening) to Christian belief? Even there, it is still unclear that there is. Take some of the most well-known theories: the theory of evolution, big bang cosmology, general and special theory of relativity, quantum physics, law of conservation of mass and energy et cetera. It is highly implausible that any of these theories are somehow threatening to Christi-anity. Granted, interpretations of the data might be inconsistent i.e., deterministic theories of quantum physics (which include macroscopic determinism), but the evidence we are presented with doesn’t do anything to falsify Christian teachings. Let me give two examples. An example from the so-called ‘meas-urement problem’ in quantum physics, and the ‘Libet experiments’ in neuroscience. The famous Libet ex-periments was interpreted to show that human beings do not have free will. Benjamin Libet (1916-2007), a scientist from the University of California, performed neuroscientific experiments seeking to demonstrate that our intentions occur prior to the

208 Ref. Vilenkin (Reasonablefaith) on there being no evidence

for an eternal universe. I am presupposing here that Christianity is not consistent with an eternal universe. While St. Thomas Aquinas thought it was not, I am not sure how that is possible (Genesis 1:1).

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brain event which caused it. For those who have never heard of the experiment, here it is:

“In the original and most influential Libet experiments…participants were instructed to move their hand at a moment of their choice within a certain period of time (e.g 20 sec). While doing this, they watched a very fast clock, and reported subsequently the moment at which they first had the ‘in-tention’ (or whatever) to move the hand. They reported the ‘intention’ to move the hand as (on average) occurring 200 msec before the onset of muscle activity initiat-ing the hand movement. However, electrodes placed on their scalp recorded (on each occasion of hand moving) a build up of ‘readiness potential’ (RP), which was evidence of a particular kind of brain event (which I’ll call B1) occurring on average 550 msec before the muscle activity. Ex-periments of other kinds, Libet claimed, showed that subjects report the time of sensations as occurring 50 msec before the time of brain events which caused them…That led Libet to hold that subjects misjudge that time of all conscious events by 50 msec, and so he concluded that (on average) the ‘intention’ first appeared 150 msec before the muscle activation, and

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movement, and that the ‘intention’ was a mere epiphenomenon.”209

This, immediately, was questioned:

“So, if the subjects’ reports are at all accu-rate there is a succession of events: a brain event (B1), then a (conscious) mental event (the intention which I’ll call M2), and then some brain event (which I’ll call B3) which directly causes the muscle activity and so the movement. Many neuroscientists pro-ceed from that to reach this extraordinary conclusion that the intention does not cause the bodily movement.” And he con-cludes that, “it is equally compatible with all the data and the most natural explana-tion of them to suppose that B1 causes (in the sense of being a necessary condition for) the ‘conscious intention’ (M2), and that the intention causes the brain event (B3) which directly causes the movement. Cau-sation is transitive. If I flip the light switch and thereby cause the light bulb to light-up, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that my flipping the switch caused an elec-tric current to pass to the bulb and the current caused the bulb to light-up.”210

To put it more clearly, consider Craig’s response:

209 Swinburne, MBFW pg. 109. 210 Swinburne, MBFW pg. 110.

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“As I contemplated Libet’s results, it struck me forcefully, this is exactly what the dualist-interactionist would expect. The soul (or mind) does not act inde-pendently of the brain; rather, as the Nobel Prize-winning neurologist Sir John Eccles put it, the mind uses the brain as an instru-ment to think. So, of course, the soul’s decisions are not simultaneous with the conscious awareness of them. How could they be? Given the soul’s reliance upon the brain as an instrument of thought and the finite velocity of the transmission of neural signals, of course there is a time lag be-tween the mind’s decisions and the awareness of them. In Libet’s experiment, since neural processes travel at finite ve-locities, of course it takes time for the mind’s decision to come to consciousness. This is exactly what we should expect on a dualist-interactionist view.”211

It is here that I want to give another example and shift the discussion to miracles and show how they are not inconsistent with our best scientific knowledge, and that it is the work of Christian phi-losopher (once again!) Alvin Plantinga who allows us to see this.

211 Ref. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/libets-experiments-

and-determinism

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When discussing miracles there are about four things to consider:

(1) The possibility of miracles

(2) Methodological naturalism

(3) Identifying a miracle

(4) The actual occurrence of miracles

So, let us begin with (1). Perhaps the most im-portant work on science and religion has been Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies (2011). In it, he shows how theism and physics, cosmology, bio-logical evolution and miracles are all non-threatening to a Christian understanding of the world. Indeed, his thesis is the very opposite:

“My overall claim in the book: there is su-perficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism.”212

To show the former (that theism and science are well together), he answers objections from all sides; to show the latter, he uses his famous Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). While the scope of the book does not include a detailed discus-sion, even those who disagree with Plantinga recognize it as a serious argument to think about. The main premise is that naturalism is rationally un-affirmable, since our cognitive faculties are not

212 Plantinga. Where the Conflict Really Lies. Pg. ix.

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truth-oriented, but survival oriented.213 To display what Plantinga’s argument for miracles looks like, I will consider his argument, his exchange with Dan-iel Dennett, and conclude that the Christian philosopher has only to benefit from the work being done on these hard topics, to the effect that the ra-tional affirmability of science on theism is just another reason why (Christian) theism is a prefera-ble worldview.

Here, I want to provide a metaphysical frame-work for the possibility of miracles advocated and defended by Alvin Plantinga.214 C.S Lewis spoke of miracles as an event when “that which is outside [the universe] wishes to invade her”215; particularly, when God decides to ‘invade’ into the universe, the term ‘miracle’ applies because nature, in and of itself, would not have brought about the event. Indeed, the question of ‘miracles’ infringes on understanding what is meant by ‘law of nature’. Without going into long and strenuous debates regarding ‘laws of na-ture’, I will simply assume that a ‘law of nature’ is a “pattern to which events conform.”216 The laws of

213 For the argument, see WCRL. Pg. 307-350. 214 Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Reli-

gion and Naturalism (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 80.

215 C.S Lewis, “Miracles” in The Complete C.S Lewis Signature Classics (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), p. 360.

216 C.S Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed-ited by Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), 73.

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nature do not have causal powers; rather, they ex-plain what, under normal conditions, events follow (a designated pattern). So, in this paper I will begin by providing a metaphysical framework for the pos-sibility of miracles provided by Alvin Plantinga; I then want to provide an objection by Daniel Dennett and a further response by Alvin Plantinga. In the end, I will suggest that the logical and metaphysical possibility of miracles allows for the possible actual-ity of miracles (which a natural theological argument would suffice in proving, as I will explain later) and raises the question of God’s existence. As an after-thought, it also raises important questions concerning the relationship between theology and science.

In his Where the Conflict Really Lies (2011), Al-vin Plantinga devises an account of laws of nature as follows:

“(LN) When the universe is causally closed (when God is not acting specially in the world), P.

For example, Newton’s law of gravity would go as follows:

(G) When the universe is causally closed, any two material objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to

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the square of the distance between them.”217

Plantinga’s metaphysical framework states that a law of nature (LN) does not preclude miracles; mira-cles are implicitly possible in what a ‘law of nature’ means; to say that Newton’s law of gravity works is to say that, under standard conditions (that is, when God is not acting specially in the world), then New-ton’s law holds. While one might be skeptical as to this definition, any attempt to ground laws of nature in a causally closed system, that is, a system of strictly logically necessary causal connections be-tween events, begs the question in favor of methodological naturalism. Methodological natural-ism is the view according to which science (or some other knowledge enterprise), must proceed with the presupposition of naturalism.218 So, any objection re-lying on methodological naturalism is begging the question, ad hoc and requires independent justifica-tion. However, supposing that methodological naturalism is at best irrelevant, if God does causally interact in the universe, then a miracle has occurred.

217 Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 80. 218 There have been problems with Alvin Plantinga’s definition

of ‘naturalism’ which Tyler Journeaux identifies. So, I shall use the term ‘naturalism’ as Plantinga does (as the belief that there is no such person as God, or anything like Him) and refer interested read-ers to Tyler’s website: “Naturalism and Supernaturalism”, Tyler Journeaux: https://tylerjourneauxgraham.wordpress.com/ Ac-cessed May 17, 2016.

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The framework Plantinga has constructed al-lows for the logical and metaphysical possibility of miracles. This does not imply that miracles do occur, but it shows that it is logically possible for a miracle to actually occur. In their 2009 debate at the Ameri-can Philosophical Association Central Division conference, Plantinga and Daniel Dennett debated on the topic of ‘Science and Religion’ to which Den-nett presents the following objection to Plantinga’s metaphysical framework for the possibility of mira-cles: “When a physicist “proves” that a stone dropped from a height will fall within acceleration 9.8 meters/sec, does this not tacitly assume that no person (e.g., God) will intervene to adjust the rate? Physicists don’t routinely add an escape clause, “un-less God chooses to intervene,” because it is tacitly assumed that no such “possibilities” are taken seri-ously.”219 Plantinga responds to this objection by suggesting that naturalism is not assumed in science nor courts of law: “in science, we assume that God won’t capriciously interfere with our experiments. The same goes in everyday life: I’m rock climbing and reach for a hold; I take it for granted that God won’t turn that hold into Jell-O just as I touch it.”220 Plantinga continues and makes a historical and theo-logical note. The historical note is as follows: “one of the ways in which Christian theism is hospitable to science, one of the reasons modern empirical science

219 Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, Science and Religion: Are

they compatible? (New York, NY: Oxford University Press), 48. 220 Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, Science and Religion, 63.

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came to be and flourished in the Christian West, is this assumption that God is in control of nature and does not act arbitrarily.”221. Further than that, if one thinks that God created human beings in His image, and part of that image involves “our ability to have worthwhile and important knowledge about our-selves and our world”, then “our ability to do science is an extremely important part of the divine image” and therefore “God would not arbitrarily stand in the way of our coming to such knowledge—by, for example, capriciously spoiling our experiments.”222 There is, in the end, no methodological arbitrariness between asserting that the laws of nature are con-stant and that God can causally interact with the physical universe.

The possibility of miracles raises one im-portant consideration and one important question: (1) The possibility of miracles does not imply that there is something to perform the miracle i.e., God and (2) is it possible that miracles have actually oc-curred? To consider the first important consideration (1), I want to share my agreeance. In-deed, I am committed to the view that the logical and metaphysical possibility of miracles does not im-ply that God exists. However, the logical and metaphysical possibility of miracles implies the pos-sibility of the following subjunctive conditional: If God exists, it is possible that He (has) and can per-formed a miracle. So, the question becomes: Does

221 Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, Science and Religion, 64. 222 Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, Science and Religion, 65.

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God exist? This is a question of natural theology, a sub-discipline of theology which explores non-au-thoritative arguments and evidences for the existence of God. If God exists, though, the second question (2) becomes essential since it is possible that God actually has acted in the world specially. For instance, the claim of Christians is that Jesus Christ was the second Person of the Trinity who came to earth to save human beings from their sins and offer eternal life. So, Jesus, if He was God, rose from the dead; this implies that God has acted spe-cially in the world and thus (1) God exists (and that Jesus was God if Christianity is true—which I be-lieve), and that (2) at least one miracle has occurred.

The metaphysical and logical possibility of miracles allows for the question of ‘miracles’ to be meaningful; further, though, this possibility allows for the question ‘Does God exist?’ to become an im-portant, metaphysical question to which natural theology can helpfully respond. 223 If God does exist,

223 I say this tentatively. I am not a theological rationalist who

affirms the proposition that belief in God is justified if and only if there is evidence for His existence; rather, I say that natural theol-ogy can help adjudicate whether or not God exists since there are good arguments for God’s existence i.e., the cosmological argument, teleological argument, axiological argument, argument from math-ematics, argument from intentional states of consciousness, argument from beauty, argument from consciousness, argument from the gradation of being, argument from the resurrection of Jesus and so on. This in no way means that there are other ways of know-ing that there is such a person as God i.e., personal experience. Also, I am aware that I have skipped many epistemological and metaphys-ical debates over miracles; however, I hope that the framework

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it is possible that He has performed a miracle; if Christianity is true, there is at least one miracle.224 It

Plantinga has provided serves as grounds for thinking that miracles are not mere ‘violations’ of the laws of nature and that science is very hospitable to theistic understandings of the world. Mathematician John Lennox makes this point nicely as he says “God does not con-flict or compete with the laws of physics as an explanation. God is actually the ground of all explanation, in the sense that he is the cause in the first place of there being a world for the laws of physics to describe” in his God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it any-way? (Oxford, England: Lion Books, 2011), 37.

224 This paper has caused me to consider a deep question re-

garding theology and science: What is their relationship? William Lane Craig and J.P Moreland sketch six ways in which science and theology can be integrated which I will share here and leave for fu-ture work and consideration. (Perhaps it will serve, too, as a method of availing those who worry that science and theology do conflict of their worry):

“A. Science and theology focus on two distinct, nonoverlapping areas of investigation, viz. the natural and the supernatural.

B. Science and theology involve two different, complementary approaches to and descriptions of the same reality from different per-spectives. Each involves a different level of description, tells us different kinds of things, and uses different vocabulary. Each level of description is complete at its own level without having gaps in its perspective. Nevertheless, each is only a partial description of the whole reality described. Science and theology do not directly inter-act with each other in epistemically positive or negative ways, but are complementary views of the total reality described. Science and theology only conflict if one field illicitly encroaches into the terri-tory of the other field.

C. Science can fill out details in theology or help to apply theo-logical principles and vice versa.

D. Theology provides the metaphysical and epistemological foundation for science by justifying or, at least, helping to justify the necessary presuppositions of science.

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is here that I want to suggest that it is because of the work of Plantinga (and many others), that further work can be done in Christian philosophy with intel-lectual honesty and rigor; the Christian philosopher does not have to worry about science since it is the-ism that provides a foundation in which science itself can flourish.

I think that there is a question which follows, though, from the metaphysical possibility of mira-cles, namely, their occurrence. Sure, they are possible (and no scientific law is ‘broken’), but do we have any reason to think they actually happened, do hap-pen and will continue to happen? My answer is, most certainly, yes. While I think there are good reasons to suppose that at least one miracles has oc-curred (the resurrection of Jesus (which proves that at least one miracle has occurred), I think there are good grounds for thinking they actually do happen.

There are still three considerations: (2) Methodological naturalism (3) Identifying a miracle

E. Science provides the boundaries within which theology must

work. Theology can do its work only after consulting science. Thus science can inform theology but not vice versa.

F. Science and theology involve descriptions that can directly interact with each other in mutually reinforcing or competing ways.” This model of integration was retrieved and quotes from William Lane Craig and J.P Moreland’s Philosophical Foundations for a Chris-tian Worldview (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 350-351

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(4) The actual occurrence of miracles Let us move to (2). What is meant by ‘methodologi-cal naturalism’? Basically, the idea is this: If science (or any other academic discipline) is to be done gen-uinely, it must presuppose that there are no supernatural forces operative in nature i.e., miracles. While this was addressed on the previous essay, I will give a couple further comments on it for clarity. Mathematician John Lennox’s view encapsulates both the intuition that science is done without posit-ing God constantly and that God is an active God in the history of the world:

“I don’t find the term methodological natu-ralism particularly helpful. It seems to me for 99 percent of science, it makes no differ-ence whether you think the universe is apparently designed or actually designed. So, methodological theism would work as well as methodological naturalism.”225

This paragraph, though, creates a worry that Lennox rightly recognizes:

“However, there is an important question to be asked: could it be that studying a system under a naturalistic presupposition raises questions that are insolvable at that level so that we must look outside naturalism to a higher level of the input of mind? That’s

225 Lennox, Miracles, pg. 33.

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where the real problem comes…I want to be free to follow the evidence where it leads. That is, to my mind, the true Socratic spirit of science. To force a naturalistic paradigm on everything has the effect of closing down science rather than opening it up.”226

The fascinating insight Lennox opens, is the idea that by presupposing naturalism, science is itself undermined (or at least opens itself to that pos-sibility). Without getting into further debates here, let us proceed to the next section or aspects of miracles, namely, (3). It is not hard to imagine oneself asking, regarding miracles: What would it take me to believe in a miracle of someone had asked claimed that one happened? Indeed, it would seem to take a lot to believe someone—even if they were of good sense! However, while we might have intuitions one way or another, it is important to focus in on what exactly is at work here. What does it mean to identify a miracle? What are the criteria for identifying a miracle? How can we be sure that this identification is le-gitimate? Consider an important, historically aimed paragraph William Lane Craig has to offer:

226 Lennox, pg. 33-34.

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“…the protagonists in the classical debate over miracles were greatly concerned about the possibility of demonic miracles and how to identify a truly divine miracle. Their an-swer to this problem constitutes one of their most important and enduring contri-butions to the discussion of miracles. They argued that the doctrinal context of the miracle makes it clear whether the miracle is truly from God. Thus, they drew atten-tion to the context in which the miracle occurred as the basis for the interpretation of that miracle. This is extremely im-portant, for a miracle without a context is inherently ambiguous. But in the case of Je-sus' miracles and resurrection the context is religiously significant: they occur in the context of and as the climax to Jesus' own unparalleled life, teaching, and personal claim to authority, and served as signs of the inbreaking of the Kingdom. Here is a context of events that, as Paley rightly em-phasized, is unique in the history of mankind. It ought, therefore, to give us se-rious pause, whereas some isolated scientific anomaly might occasion only cu-riosity. In this way the religious context of a miracle furnishes us with the proper in-terpretation of that miracle.”227

227 http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-problem-of-miracles-

a-historical-and-philosophical-perspective#ixzz4OpC0RaeP

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Thus, miracles are not ambiguous if they are taken in their proper religio-historical context.228 While this is just one possible way to conceptualize about the ways in which one can identify a miracle, the basic idea be-hind any truth-conducive theory is manifest: it must make sense with respect to the religio-historical con-text in which it occurred—otherwise ambiguity is going to be problematic here. Moving, then, to (4). The aspect under (4) is very interesting inas-much as the question, typically, of miracles, is not their mere possibility and possible identification, but their actuality—do they really happen? There are three ways, I think, that a miracle can be understood. A miracle in one’s own life, a miracle in the world identified and a near death experience (which is not a miracle per se, but a way in which the idea of a ‘natu-ralistic ontology’ is made improbable).229 So, here is what I am going to do: I will give one example of a miracle in ‘one’s own life’, a near death experience and

228 This answers the objections from Hume and Spinoza in part;

for a more devastating criticism, see John Earman’s “Hume’s Abject Failure.”

229 I have three reasons for apologies to the reader here. First, I am leaving ‘naturalism’ very vague. See ref. Tyler Journeaux for a larger discussion. Secondly, I am being vague with respect to the falsification of a naturalistic ontology. For instance, there are imma-terial realities which would not imply theistic connotations (such as I am making it sound like) ex. Abstract objects. Thirdly, there is work done here which I am not exploring since it is irrelevant—albeit important to know. Ref. “Are numbers immaterial?” ref. read-ing last year from first year philosophy (see notes for ref).

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instead of giving examples of miracles on the contem-porary scene, cite here one of the most important works—two-volumes and almost 1200 pages—on miracles ever written which has a plethora of exam-ples of miracles.230 Let’s begin with miracles in one’s own life. The problem with miracles in one’s own life is the following: skepticism is almost always the knee-jerk reaction. John Lennox, in describing what he thinks a miracle in his own life, shares the same intu-ition. But, he says that nonetheless it is worth sharing the experience. Since I share his intuition, realizing the reader might not, I will re-print his story anyway:

“As you know, I have been a lot to Russia. How did I come to go to Russia? Well, I’ll tell you. I was at a conference of mathemat-ical cryptographers. You all depend on them when it comes to the security of your money in the bank. The conference was in Belgium and after it was over the bus driver

230 I have been asked before ‘so if Jesus’ resurrection was a mir-

acle, why aren’t there miracles today?’ While this question itself is not right-headed, I shall leave that aside and give my response: They do happen. There are denumerable examples that can be given and, like any inquisitive person, they are all subject to skepticism. This does not mean that skepticism is warranted; rather, it means that if one is interested in truth and not sloganeering with “there is no ev-idence for miracles”, one must confront the thinkers who provide the opposing perspective; fortunately, Craig Keener has compiled one of the most comprehensive surveys on miracles which not only falsifies popular misunderstandings of miracles, but answers even founda-tional problems which arise i.e., Hume’s critique, methodological naturalism, et cetera. Ref. Miracles 2-Vols.

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took a detour to the station with the result that we missed the train. So, there were 50 irritable mathematicians standing on the platform in Belgium. I was going to Co-logne in Germany and it was late at night. I was a bit concerned. I had a heavy suitcase and in those days, Cologne station wasn’t the best place to be found after midnight. When the train arrived, I found myself in a compartment with a German, a Belgian and two Russians. I sat beside one of the Rus-sians and I started to talk to him. He was rather surprised that I could speak a bit of his language. “What do you do?” He said, “I’m an ecologist.” “Oh,” I said, “Ecologist? Do they have those in Russia?” And he said, “Yes, and this is the first time I’ve been out in the west. I come from Lake Baikal.” So I said, “Can you openly talk about ecol-ogy in Russia?” He said, “Well, you know, we can say a bit.”

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And then I said to him, “Are there other things that you can talk about openly that were taboo earlier?” He said, “Like what?” I said, “Like God, for example.” And he said, “Yes, we can talk about God.” In that moment, a thought rushed into my mind, “I’ve got to give this man a Bible. But this is crazy. I mean, where do you get a Bi-ble in the middle of a night on a train going through Belgium?” Then I remembered. Three weeks before that, I’d been in Ger-many with a published friend. Sitting on his desk was a Russian Bible. He said, “Would you like to have it? I can’t read it.” I said, “I’d love it. Mind is pretty old and I’d like that.” So, I put it in my suitcase. The ques-tion that now arose in the train was: was the Bible still there? While I kept talking to the Russian man, I got up, put my hand into the suitcase and found the Bible. I took it out and I handed it to him saying, “That is for you”. He went as white as a sheet. He couldn’t speak and I thought he had taken ill. I said, “What’s wrong?”

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He said, “How did you know?” I said, “What do you mean, how did I know?” He said, “How did you know that six weeks ago, the only Bible we’ve ever seen was sto-len from our home in Siberia? This is our first visit to the West and in four hours’ time we’re taking a plane to Moscow. So, how did you know?” I said, “Do you believe there’s a God?” He said, “I don’t know, but,” he said, “look in the corner. That’s my wife. She believes.” And I turned – I’ll never forget it – to see this young woman with her face flowing, the tears streaming down her face as she clutched the Bible and she said, “Is that re-ally for me? Are you really giving it to me?” I said, “Of course.” A few moments later the train stopped at their station and they were gone in the night. The German student said to me, “Does that often happen to you?”

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I said, “No, it doesn’t. But you shouldn’t think it strange.” She said, “Why not?” “Well,” I said, “Look. This person comes from a country where they’ve been system-atically denied access to the Bible. If this is really the word of God, surely God can use me as a postman?” “Well then,” she said, “I better read it.” So she did – but that’s another story.”231

I will leave this story the reader’s discretion; however, on a more formal note, if God exists, these ‘coinci-dences’, are not very surprising. It is precisely if there is a God that these remarkable events happen; more than that, it is only if there is a provident God that these things happen. And so there are reports in many peoples (I think most peoples, if they think about it) lives which testify to having experienced some mira-cle. Of the second variety, though, near death experiences make themselves manifest and very diffi-cult to “explain way.” Let me re-print one here (and, again, this is one of many and I shall leave questions of authenticity to the reader’s discretion):

“A second, well-known account is about a woman named Viola who was checked into

231 Ref. Lennox, pg. 41-42.

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a hospital in Augusta, Georgia, in 1971 for routine gallbladder surgery. Six days after the surgery on May 5, her condition had worsened to the point that she was operated on and died at 12:15 p.m. on the operating table. When the doctor said she was dead, Viola was confused. She had been in excru-ciating pain, when she suddenly felt a ring in her ear and, then, she popped out of her body! She found herself floating near the ceiling and gazed around the operating room, noting a number of things, including her own lifeless body. Though the room had been sealed off for surgery, she could hear voices in the outside hallway and passed through the wall where she saw her anxious family. Immediately, she noticed her daughter, Kathy, who was wearing an outfit Viola did not like. (Kathy had rushed to the hospital and put on the mismatched outfit hurriedly and without thinking.) She then noticed her brother-in-law talking to a family neighbor and saying, “Well, it looks like my sister-in-law is going to kick the bucket. I was planning on going to Athens, but I’ll stuck around now to be a pall-bearer.” Viola was infuriated by the insensitive comment. She also sensed presences around her that she took to be an-gels. And get this: She could travel anywhere her thoughts directed her, so she found herself instantaneously in Rockville,

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Maryland, where she saw her sister getting ready to go o the grocery store. Viola noted carefully the clothes her sister was wearing, her search for misplaced keys and a lost grocery list, and, finally, the car she drove. Moments later, she was whisked through a tunnel. Space forbids me describe all she saw, but I must mention one thing. She met a baby who told Viola he was her brother. The baby then showed himself to her dressed in quite specific clothing and told her that when she went back to tell her fa-ther about all this. When Viola came back into her body, each and every detail I have shared was verified by the people involved, often with additional eyewitnesses. Viola’s dad confirmed that only he, Viola’s mother, and the doctor knew about the bother who had died as an infant but about whom the father and mother had decided to remain si-lent.”232

Moreland concludes his analysis by offering us to “make no mistake about it” because, from the evi-dence—from miracles reported all around the world, personal experience and near death experiences—“the afterlife is real.”233

4.5 Objections

232 Ref. Moreland, The Soul. Pg. 157-8. 233 Ref. Moreland, The Soul. Pg. 158.

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Central to making a philosophical argument, defending a position and the like, is defending it against objections. Since this is virtually impossible to survey, I will mention three areas where Christian philosophers work on objections:

(1) The coherence of theism234

(2) The problem of evil

(3) Religious pluralism

There have many recent publications on these three areas, and so I will only go through them briefly ex-plaining what they and why they matter.

The coherence of theism involves internal questions to theism; namely, questions regarding, for instance, the properties of God and whether or not they are consistent philosophically speaking. For instance, the famous “paradox of omnipotence”: Can God lift a stone so heavy He cannot lift it? This is simply answered: the idea of a stone so heavy an om-nipotent God couldn’t lift is metaphysically impossible235 (and so the question is meaningless).

234 I should note that this section, in dealing with the ‘classic’

notions i.e., omnipotence, overlooks really interesting and worth-while topics which are significantly deep. I have in mind Alex Pruss ref. Omni-rationality, Linda Zagzebski ref. Omni-subjectivity and WLC ref. Atemporal Personhood. It seems to me that if there is go-ing to be serious work on the coherence of theism in the contemporary philosophical scene, it must make reference to these discussions—it is only in a short book like this that these debates must be overlooked.

235 Ref. Plantinga on Closer to Truth episode.

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What about God’s knowing everything (omnisci-ence)? Here, too, there is no need for worry: God knows and believes only and all true propositions.236 So, the coherence of theism deals with these sorts of problems.

The problem of evil, on the other hand, is typ-ically a problem of pinnacle interest for theists and non-theists alike; however, what is little known is the advances this area has made with publications demonstrating the compatibility of the logical ver-sion of the problem of evil.237 In my view, the free will response is the best answer. C.S Lewis lays out the basic idea nicely:

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I can-not. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creat-ing. The happiness which God designs for

236 Ref. WLC’s definition. 237 Ref. Plantinga’s God, Freedom and Evil.

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His higher creatures is the happiness of be-ing freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and de-light compared with which the most important rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.”238

Thus, a truly worthwhile life must involve free-dom of the will (and so either we are free and evil exists, or there is no free will and our lives are truly horrible).239 Since, though, this book is designed to explain some developments in ana-lytic philosophy of religion, William Lane Craig’s model for thinking of the problem of evil is a central, sophisticated response to such a hard question meriting critical attention:

“1. We are not in a good position to assess the probability of whether God has morally suffi-cient reasons for the evils that occur. As finite persons, we are limited in time, space, in-telligence, and insight. But the transcendent and sovereign God sees the

238 Ref. Lewis, C.S. The Complete Works: Mere Christianity. (New

York: HarperCollins), p. 47-48 239 A professor of mine once said “I wish I was determined and

that God existed; then I could exist in a framework of meaning with-out any responsibility whatsoever.” This confuses, though, the phenomenology of freedom with actually being free. Put it like this: Would you want to be introspectively free and in reality determined i.e., unable to control your actions?

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end from the beginning and providentially orders history so that His purposes are ul-timately achieved through human free decisions. In order to achieve His ends, God may have to put up with certain evils along the way. Evils which appear point-less to us within our limited framework may be seen to have been justly permitted within God’s wider framework. To borrow an illustration from a developing field of science, Chaos Theory, scientists have dis-covered that certain macroscopic systems, for example, weather systems or insect populations, are extraordinarily sensitive to the tiniest perturbations. A butterfly fluttering on a branch in West Africa may set in motion forces which would eventu-ally issue in a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean. Yet it is impossible in principle for anyone observing that butterfly palpitat-ing on a branch to predict such an outcome. The brutal murder of an inno-cent man or a child’s dying of leukemia could produce a sort of ripple effect through history such that God’s morally sufficient reason for permitting it might not emerge until centuries later and per-haps in another land. When you think of God’s providence over the whole of his-tory, I think you can see how hopeless it is for limited observers to speculate on the probability that God could have a morally

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sufficient reason for permitting a certain evil. We’re just not in a good position to assess such probabilities.

2. The Christian faith entails doctrines that increase the probability of the co-existence of God and evil. In so doing, these doctrines decrease any improbability of God’s exist-ence thought to issue from the existence of evil. What are some of these doctrines? Let me mention four:

a. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God. One reason that the problem of evil seems so puzzling is that we tend to think that if God exists, then His goal for human life is happiness in this world. God’s role is to provide comfortable environment for His human pets. But on the Christian view this is false. We are not God’s pets, and man’s end is not happiness in this world, but the knowledge of God, which will ultimately bring true and ever-lasting human fulfillment. Many evils occur in life which maybe utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing hu-man happiness in this world, but they may not be unjustified with respect to produc-ing the knowledge of God. Innocent human suffering provides an occasion for deeper dependency and trust in God, ei-ther on the part of the sufferer or those

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around him. Of course, whether God's pur-pose is achieved through our suffering will depend on our response. Do we respond with anger and bitterness toward God, or do we turn to Him in faith for strength to endure?

b. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and His purpose. Rather than submit to and worship God, people rebel against God and go their own way and so find themselves alienated from God, morally guilty before Him, and groping in spiritual darkness, pursuing false gods of their own making. The terrible human evils in the world are testimony to man’s depravity in this state of spiritual alienation from God. The Christian is not surprised at the hu-man evil in the world; on the contrary, he expects it. The Bible says that God has given mankind over to the sin it has cho-sen; He does not interfere to stop it, but lets human depravity run its course. This only serves to heighten mankind’s moral responsibility before God, as well as our wickedness and our need of forgiveness and moral cleansing.

c. The knowledge of God spills over into eter-nal life. In the Christian view, this life is not all there is. Jesus promised eternal life to all who place their trust in him as their Savior and Lord. In the afterlife God will

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reward those who have borne their suffer-ing in courage and trust with an eternal life of unspeakable joy. The apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, lived a life of incredible suffering. Yet he wrote, “We do not lose heart. For this slight, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (II Cor. 4:16-18). Paul imagi-nes a scale, as it were, in which all the sufferings of this life are placed on one side, while on the other side is placed the glory that God will bestow on his children in heaven. The weight of glory is so great that it is literally beyond comparison with the suffering. Moreover, the longer we spend in eternity the more the sufferings of this life shrink toward an infinitesimal moment. That’s why Paul could call them “a slight and momentary affliction”—they were simply overwhelmed by the ocean of divine eternity and joy which God lavishes on those who trust Him.

d. The knowledge of God is an incommensura-ble good. To know God, the source of infinite goodness and love, is an incompa-rable good, the fulfillment of human

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existence. The sufferings of this life cannot even be compared to it. Thus, the person who knows God, no matter what he suf-fers, no matter how awful his pain, can still say, “God is good to me,” simply by virtue of the fact that he knows God, an incompa-rable good.

These four Christian doctrines greatly re-duce any improbability which evil would seem to throw on the existence of God.

3. Relative to the full scope of the evidence, God’s existence is probable. Probabilities are relative to what background information you consider. For example, suppose Joe is a student at the University of Colorado. Now suppose that we are informed that 95% of University of Colorado students ski. Relative to this information it is highly probable that Joe skis. But then suppose we also learn that Joe is an amputee and that 95% of amputees at the University of Colorado do not ski. Suddenly the proba-bility of Joe’s being a skier has diminished drastically!

Similarly, if all you consider for back-ground information is the evil in the world, then it’s hardly surprising that God’s existence appears improbable rela-tive to that. But that’s not the real question. The real question is whether

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God’s existence is improbable relative to the total evidence available. I’m persuaded that when you consider the total evidence, then God’s existence is quite probable.”240

This is one way in which a theist might respond (and to my mind, it is a perfectly consistent, non-ad hoc response). There are many other ways in which one might respond; however, the basic idea of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion is that the “problem of evil” is be-coming more of a puzzle than a problem.241 See especially Alvin Plantinga’s “Free Will” defense against the philosopher J. L. Mackie.242

There is another problem, though, that arises: The emotional version of the problem of evil. This, I think, is solved only on Christian the-ism. Notice, too, what Craig has to say on “physical ailment” (this is basically one form of the problem of emotional evil). This is from a Question of the Week (#352); having explained how he (WLC) himself suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth Syndrome and keratoconus, he shares thoughts on what seems to him im-portant things to remember about physical ailments which God does not remove immedi-ately or miraculously (and, fun fact, while I was

240 Ref. WLC. “The Problem of Evil.” http://www.reasonable-

faith.org/the-problem-of-evil#ixzz4L9P4dfme 241 I say this in reference to what I have said about the problem

of evil previously: 242 Ref. God, Freeodm and Evil and Mackie ref.

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recovering from my splenectomy, I read Craig’s work on this and found it incredibly helpful in understanding my own situation):

“1. Realize that God owes you absolutely nothing. God never promised us a happy and healthy life. Anything we have is a gift from Him. God is just under no obligation whatsoever to give us a carefree life. As sinners meriting only the justice and wrath of God, we have been saved solely by His good grace. If He chooses to give us a pleasant life on this planet, that is His discretion; but if instead He metes out to us a life filled with misery and suffering, that is also His prerogative. God is sover-eign, the Lord of all, and we have no claim whatsoever on a life free from illness or pain.

2. Think of what is yours in Christ. In Christ we have eternal life, redemption from our sins, and a relation to God, an in-commensurable good. How can we be bitter? Infinite good has already been be-stowed on us in Christ. Thus, no matter what we suffer, no matter how awful the pain, we can truly say, “God has been good to me!”, simply because of all that we have in Christ.

3. Be grateful for what earthly goods you do have. At least you’re not blind! Think of

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all those who are! The next time you’re tempted to feel sorry for yourself, think of all those worse off than you. Think of the people in North Korea, or Syria, or South-ern Sudan. How dare we feel self-pity in the face of such suffering? Cultivate a grateful spirit and frequently pause to count your blessings.

4. Understand that God’s strength may be exhibited through your weakness. Yes, soon after becoming a Christian, I prayed several times for healing from Charcot-Marie-Tooth, to no avail. I then came to appreciate the apostle Paul’s words, when he wrote of his “thorn in the flesh” that plagued him: “Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, in-sults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (II Corinthians 12:8-10). Wow! Paul boasts in his physical weakness, for then Christ’s power working through him is all the more evident! May God grant us this same spirit when we struggle with life’s ailments! Those Christians who have

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condemned your lack of faith only show that they are without understanding. Full physical healing comes only with the res-urrection, and at that time you will be healed of every infirmity. Until then we must, like Paul, struggle though by faith.

5. Seek the best medical attention. I sought out the finest corneal transplant surgeon in the U.S. to deal with my eye problems, and now I see the world through the cor-neas of two anonymous persons who selflessly thought to donate their tissue to medical science upon their death. You don’t mention anything that you have done other than pray to remedy your eye-sight, Nathaniel. Don’t listen to those who say that God answers your prayers only through miracles. It’s been rightly said that when we pray about a plumbing prob-lem, then God sends us a plumber. Similarly, God sends us doctors, who have explored the mysteries of His created or-der to uncover the secrets of health and healing. Take full advantage of what medi-cal science has discovered about the marvelous creation which is the human eye to rectify your problem. If, as with my Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome, the prob-lem proves to be incurable at present, then

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practice the points above. May God’s strength be evident in you!”243

It is no surprise that theism—vague as it may be—does not solve many problems of philosophy; rather, it is Christian theism that explains them. (This is no surprise either, especially if Christian theism is true!). In the Christian view, Jesus’ death on the cross is the source of a tremendous hope for eternal life and the forgiveness of sins; while earthly and fi-nite suffering is surely a difficult and often seemingly unbearable part of life, the Christian has at her disposal a reference point at which she can un-derstand her suffering and know that He, who suffered also, is the source of hope. Turning lastly to pluralism.

This problem is not really a problem per se; however, it is taken very seriously by many because of its intuitive force. The problem (argument) is as follows:

(1) There are many religions.

(2) Therefore, only one religion cannot be true.

So when the Muslim or Catholic says their religion is true, they are asserting that they take their reli-gion to be, fundamentally, the one true way reality is.

243 Ref. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dealing-with-physical-ail-

ment#ixzz4FU4qYglB

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This, though, is really unproblematic when taken logically.244 It is equivalent to the following:

(1) There are many books in a room.

(2) Therefore, there is no one book which ex-

presses the truth completely.

Surely this inference is flawed. Perhaps one book re-ally does contain the truth? I suppose the problem is really this: It is improbable that one religion is true. Given natural theological arguments (or reformed epistemology), in conjunction with the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, it hardly follows that this is the case.

Summary

In Chapter 4, we have gone over the projects of the Christian philosopher. We discussed how the Chris-tian philosopher might view the history of philosophy, the relationship between the particular sub-disciplines of philosophy, doxastic coherence, the relationship between philosophical and theologi-cal propositions and so forth. Then, issues of science and religion were raised, and I shared thoughts on Plantinga’s take on miracles (which to my mind solved the problem with sufficient clarity and accu-racy). Then we discussed miracles and showed how

244 Ref. Plantinga on “Can many religions all be true?” (Closer

to truth episode).

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attempts to show that they cannot (and do not) oc-cur, do not work. Thereafter, we went through how the Christian philosopher thinks about objections to Christianity and why, ultimately, Christianity tri-umphs over objections of various sorts.

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Chapter 5

Think Philosophically, Think Catholic

“without a concept of secularization, we cannot un-derstand our history of the last centuries.”

Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (1933)245

5.1 Catholicism, Philosophy and Living for Christ: Responding to Secularization and Acedia

At this point in the book, I want to make some remarks on secularization since, ultimately, the Christian philosopher must be in one sense a particu-larist about his or her historical situation; if apologetics is needed, it is because there is a general inclination of people to turn away from God Himself, and pursue their own projects. Thus, an understand-ing of secularization, even if only in outline will, in my view, prove to be valuable since (i) it will shed light on our contemporary situation and (ii) re-iter-ate the need for Christian philosophers and their work for apologetics and evangelism.

While extensive work on secularism has al-ready been done and so will not be done here246, it goes without saying that there are particular effects

245 Ref. Political Theology. Pg. 3. He says this understanding is

due to Heinrich Forsthoff and Friedrick Gogarten. 246 Ref. Taylor’s “A Secular Age.”

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of secularism, or offshoots of secularism, that have occurred ultimately beginning with the Enlighten-ment.

One particular manifestation of secularism was the so-called 21th century “New Atheism.” While the New Atheism—composed of the “four horsemen” Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens—was an attempt to respond to the horrible incident of 9/11, they overlooked very important philosophical in-sights and established themselves on a popular level. The extend to which they impacted many lives ought not be overlooked; indeed, it is precisely when we mistake these thinkers for people “complaining about religion”, that we overlook their impact.

While many responses were devastatingly given in response, the New Atheism slowly died out, and what can be called the “New Christians” emerged. Put in a more interesting way, for each of the New Atheists, there was a counter-response which attempted—successfully, in my view—to show how and why these views ultimately failed un-der hard pressed scrutiny. It is here that I want to mention a more different side-effect of secularism, namely, acedia.

Acedia is, and has always been considered to be, a lethal sin. Indeed, acedia is the Greek for the sin “sloth.” Acedia is, basically, a hatred of being and a denial of all that is diving. There are many aspects of this, and inasmuch as a proper study requires

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much more work, I want to limit my remarks to one aspect, namely, indifference.

Consider the following:

“Indifference is the very nadir of the soul. And it is the very definition of the modern soul. If diversions do not keep us from Heaven, indifference will. The first an greatest commandment is to love (seek) God with all our heart (passion). Indiffer-ence is the opposite. Indifference is farther from the love of God than hatred of God is. You can love and hate the same person at the same time, but you cannot love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time. Diversion and indifference are the Devil’s two most successful weapons against faith and salvation, the two widest roads to Hell in today’s world…Indiffer-ence is more fashionable today than it ever was before.”247

Given that, in addition, “indifference is stupid”248, are we surprised to hear Pascal, one of the most prolific thinkers of the 17th century, urge that “man does not according to the reason which constitutes his be-ing.”249? Kreeft continues with an interesting historical remark:

247 Ref. Kreeft. Pascal. Pg. 188. 248 Ref. Kreeft. Pascal pg. 188. 249 Pascal. Pg. 202.

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“Indifference is more fashionable today than it ever was before, except perhaps once: as Rome was dying—decadent, so-phisticated, skeptical, relativistic, jaded, bored and promiscuous, skidding down its own mudslide of spiritual waste—exactly like us…If there is any certain symptom of social senility it is indifference, shown in slogans like “anything goes”, “do your own thing”, “different stokes for different folks”, “or “live and let live.”250

The aforementioned Albert Camus said some-thing very similar when he said our almost automatic expression ‘nothing’ might be reveal-ing something about our interior lives. Saturated in “a culture of death”251, we find our-selves on the brink of despair, indifferent to what is true, beautiful and good—this is the na-ture, and offspring of, acedia.

The most important question, in my view, of all Christian apologetics—post-argu-ments and post-objections—, namely, to be able to give a response to the indifference that not only prevents good apologetics from being done, but ruins the soul’s very capacity for hearing the truth. It was Immanuel Kant who gave the profound insight: It is when Christian-ity ceases to be beautiful that its destruction

250 Kreeft. Pg. 188. 251 Snell pg.5

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will inevitably follow.252 So, what are we to do, given the depth of Christian analytic philoso-phy, in the face of such a problem?

5.2 Patrick Sullivan’s “Four Monks Walk into a Pub”, Apologetics and Evangelism: Telling versus Showing

As this book comes to a close, I want to make some reflections on Christian analytic philosophy and why it matters. For one thing, it contributes to the widespread problem of apathy (acedia), and for-wards the attempt to give a rational case for Christian theism (in its proper form, Catholicism, in my view). However, in the extreme cases of indiffer-ence, a different method must be sought. While this topic might be appropriately treated at book length, I want to make some points regarding a distinction between living the faith, and knowing and being able to verbally share the faith.

This distinction is important for two reasons. First, when it is conflated we don’t distinguish the types of evangelism, and our proper ability to dis-cern which is most appropriately used. (The three types of evangelism are easily remembered: evange-lism, by beauty, truth and goodness). Secondly, it is only when we realize that there is a distinction that a promising answer to apathy can be reasonably given. The fact that its possible to convert those who don’t believe by beauty is not surprising; how-ever, what it little know is the effect of beauty to

252 Ref. Sullivan’s video.

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those who are apathetic. The one, big problem to-wards apologetics is the age-old “who cares” or “what difference does it make.” While many things out to be said here, it is important to remember that when they fail to hear the truth, as human beings they can see it as well. This is not a surprising in-sight, and it has been pointed out that our ability to see itself is compromised.253

I would like to use a fictional work to display what I mean, even if only in a rough-draft fashion of perhaps only in outline. Patrick Sullivan, whose work I have relied on—much implicit or explicitly—in his book “Four Monks Walk into a Pub”, displays an interesting conversational narrative which gets at my point. In the book, ‘Atheist’, ‘Hindu’, ‘Buddhist’ and ‘Christian’, constitutive of “Friends First”, a stu-dent-funded university club, all discuss the “big” questions of life. Among them is the following: What are human beings? Where do we come from? What is our ultimate end? Does it matter how we behave? Are all religions basically the same? Having finished the book—spoiler alert—once the first four questions are answered so is the fifth. These religions are not all basically the same—propositionally speaking, that is, with respect to their information content i.e., they have different views they hold. Something interest-ing, though, is learnt by this narrative, namely, even through the obvious distinctions between their views, and the eventual agreeance that not all reli-gions are the same, ends with a sort of pause. This

253 Ref. Pieper “Only the Lover Sings.”

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pause has two aspects: The first is that this pause leaves open the truth of the matters (whether one truth-claim gets closer at reality than another—which is explored in the book). The second, though, is a pause because there is something lacking from the discussion of ideas. It is only until the end of the book that something very interesting happens:

“[Stepping out into the Toronto night, the four university students encounter a rainless sky. In its place a chill has settled in the air and the wind is far from forgiving. Within moments the group bundles up and are ready to set off in their different directions. It’s then that Atheist notices a homeless man on the ground, huddled up against a wall, his head and extremities buried under a tattered blanket.]

Atheist: [To the others] Why does it matter how we behave again?

[Seemingly all at once, the members of Friends First drop some money into a box beside the homeless man that they had failed to notice a moment earlier.]

Christian: [Noticing Hindu’s contribution] I thought…

Hindu: [Interrupting] I know but this time…

[Hindu doesn’t finish his thought; he doesn’t need to as there is no challenge in Christian’s

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expression. And with that, Friends First parts ways.].”254

It is through actions and not merely ideas that Hindu sees the truth of the matter, and is won by it. The point of this, though, is easily understood: If people see the difference between the religions in ac-tion, the propositional distinctions, while they hold, are not moving, evangelistically speaking.

In his segment on “Life on the Rock” (2015), Patrick Sullivan explains what I am calling the sec-ond aspect of the ‘pause’ more explicitly, and the necessity of evangelism by beauty and action more clearly:

“My response has been let’s not talk about it so much as let me show you how we [Catholics] are different. And in there there’s a challenge to myself. If they can’t tell that I am different from how I’m be-having, from how I am living, from how I am speaking, then there’s already a prob-lem. For me most people are asking that question [are religions basically the same?] because they don’t see a difference

254 Two notes must be made to avoid ambiguity. First, the

temptation to interpret this story as a matter of Hindu being a ‘fol-lower’ or someone ‘peer pressured’ is contextually—and therefore hermeneutically—inaccurate (and the entirety of the story makes this plain). Secondly, the fact that Christian question’s Hindu’s action does not show any judgement on Hindu’s from Christian’s part; it is in light of remarks made about the conduct of Hindu’s actions earlier on (pg. 113-115).

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from the Hindu, from the Christian et cetera, They’re looking at us and saying you blend in too well so what is different anyway? And I think the New Evangelism is about this.”255

For those that are indifferent, and who cannot help but be indifferent to religion—in part because they ‘blend’ in action (in concreto) too often—the goal is to show them and not tell them the truth of the faith. It is with the developments of Christian analytic phi-losophy that hard apologetical questions can be answered, and the most difficult problem—apathy—can be overcome by a simple act of living the faith in the real world.

255 Ref. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQucu0NYY68

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Appendix A: Pedagogy, Reading and Ignorance: Two Essays

It is no surprise that all three of these con-cepts ‘pedagogy’, ‘reading’ and ‘ignorance’ all go together. Perhaps the latter two are less intuitive since presumably a method of overcoming igno-rance—I mean here the lack of knowledge (not calling someone ‘ignorant’ as an insult)—is often by reading. While this is very true, I want to share what I find to be particularly problematic in intro-ductory books to philosophy, namely, the inability to engage with large bodies of literature on the subject for the benefit of the reader—and for the reader’s comprehension of the material in front of them. Of course, it is difficult to display every writing virtue in a single book (perhaps it is impossible even); how-ever, I do not see this as a legitimate excuse to write introduction to philosophy books as if they display the whole or sum total of the philosophical positions on issues—and then leave many positions out. Hav-ing read a contemporary introduction to philosophy by Robert Stainton and Andrew Brooks, I want to share my thoughts on their book and its larger ex-tension into important aspects of teaching philosophy to beginners (and the dangers of doing so that must be avoided). It is here that I will print what I have written in the past about them. So, for the reader’s interest (and in the case that the reader is him/herself a beginner to philosophy), here are my thoughts on pedagogy, reading and ignorance through an evaluation of Andrew Brooks and Robert

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Stainton’s Knowledge and Mind: A Philosophical Intro-duction (2008), followed by an essay on reading fiction literature and reading it as serious philosoph-ical inquiry. Afterwards, I will provide—in another Appendix (B)—a reading list I think helpful for the beginner in philosophy.

Pedagogy of Philosophy

This essay seeks to explore and explain im-portant aspects of a responsible pedagogy of philosophy. By ‘responsible pedagogy of philosophy’, I mean a methodology of teaching philosophy which respects the respective thinkers and ideas in ques-tion, and which uses philosophy as a device for wisdom (entailing fair representation of both sides of an argument as well as knowing and citing relevant literature). In this paper, I want to elucidate and ex-plain why teaching philosophy entails responsibilities, what those responsibilities are and why it matters. To schematize and explain my argu-ment, I will explore the responsibility of the philosopher in teaching philosophy by sharing my intuitions regarding Robert Stainton and Andrew Brooks’ (hereafter just ‘Stainton’) Knowledge and Mind: A Philosophical Introduction (2011), a recent in-troductory work to epistemology and the philosophy of mind. I will focus on their section 8 “Immortality Again: Can We Look Forward to Life after Death?” (pgs. 126-133). While my analysis is limited to this section, I hope important and helpful insights are ex-plicit through exploring pedagogical tactics and their respective implications. Having explored this

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section, I will conclude that a responsible pedagogy of philosophy must not begin with unjustified, igno-rant and unwarranted presuppositions; if this is not the standard to which a pedagogy of philosophy is held, philosophy is apt to miss its proper object—truth.

Section 8 “Immortality Again: Can We Look Forward to Life after Death?”, begins with an im-portant note: “We will end this chapter by considering an issue that motivates many people to care about whether the mind is or is not simply pro-cesses in matter.” (p. 126) [1]. Presumably, the theory is that the psychological question of motiva-tions concerning the physical/non-physical status of mind leads into deeper philosophical considerations concerning whether or not it really matters. So, Stainton raises one question (8) which turns into a further question (9) to which they purport to have an answer: “(8) Can (and will) we continue to exist after the death of the body?...(9) Can (and will) I continue to exist as me after the death of my body?” (p. 126-127). The answer given to this question is as follows: “One of our two conclusions will be that there’s little evidence that the answer is ‘Yes’, little evidence for an afterlife. Our other conclusion (you might call it our big conclusion) will be that, surprisingly, having little hope of a life after the death of our body shouldn’t be very upsetting.” (p. 127). Thus, Stainton professes two conclusions, (1) there is little evidence of an afterlife and (2) no life after death isn’t upset-ting. At first glance, it seems hasty to move from

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considerations of epistemology and philosophy of mind to questions of life after death. No doubt Stain-ton’s response to this would be to say that without an immaterial mind (or soul, ego or what have you), there couldn’t metaphysically possibly be an afterlife; but this is simply false. Peter van Inwagen is a Christian philosopher who believes that human be-ings are just material objects. The truth of van Inwagen’s view is irrelevant; the point is that not one piece of literature on Christian materialism is cited. Another interesting note would be concerning (2). It seems that even if Stainton is right, it has ab-solutely nothing to do with the philosophical question of the ontology of life after death. Whether or not life after death is bad, morally neutral or good, seems to be irrelevant to the ontology of life after death (which is the first, fundamental question which should be asked here). So, Stainton must pro-vide good reasons to think life after death does not exist, and further that life after death is really not something worth having. Stainton’s first claim is a necessary condition for answering the second; even if life after death was not worth having, that does nothing to change the ontology of it.

I will now begin by making explicit the meth-odology of Stainton here: “Here’s the plan. We will present two different arguments, each of which tries to show that there is life after death. Neither of these arguments works very well…But things are worse than that for the afterlife proponent. For there are several compelling reasons for thinking that there is

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no life after death.” (p. 127). I shall now make these arguments manifest and explain why they are im-portant to a pedagogy of philosophy. The first argument for the afterlife is as follows:

“Premise 1 If life truly ends at death, then life ultimately has no meaning Premise 2 It would be awful if life ultimately had no meaning. Conclusion Therefore, life does not end at death.” (p. 127)

This is an immensely weak argument. Indeed, with an argument this weak it is no wonder Stainton thinks that the afterlife proponent has come to a false conclusion. But, the question arises, is this the strongest argument for the afterlife? My answer, and I suspect most philosophers—especially analytic philosophers of religion—recognize, is that this is a terrible argument for the afterlife. While Stainton shows how this argument fails (invalid, argument from hope, subject to counter-examples), he has failed to recognize that this is not a fair representa-tion of the views of the proponents of the afterlife since he has not presented the strongest argument in favor of the afterlife (nowhere near it, in fact). In testing any theory, the goal is to answer the strong-est, not weakest objections to it. To present a bad argument and pull it apart is pedagogically danger-ous; the impression Stainton gives is that anyone advocating the afterlife argues along these lines

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(which is simply false). Having dealt with pedagogi-cal problems here (that of representation and its importance), P1 is critiqued by Stainton too [2].

Stainton says the following about P1: “Though P1 may look plausible at first glance, in the end it’s not so obvious at all. To see this, ask your-self why exactly must life continue to exist after the death of the body if it is to have any meaning. Couldn’t life’s meaning derive from the 75-odd years that the body is alive? Or couldn’t the source of meaning be one’s fellows and one’s achievements during this life? Unless there’s a good answer to these questions, P1 is also questionable.” (p. 127). This critique is not promising. Here are two reasons why. First, the questions Stainton raises, while im-portant, have been answered elsewhere [3]. Stainton, in citing no literature on the topic, leaves the reader without much to work with. From his analysis, one might conclude that no one has an-swered—or even attempted to answer—these questions. So, as Stainton says that “those who en-dorse life after death have the burden of proof” (p. 127), so Stainton must provide justification for any alternative theory of meaning (which he has not). His skepticism, though, against the possibility of life’s meaning being grounded in the afterlife, seems to me to be a confession of ignorance. Secondly, however, Stainton has not distinguished subjective from objective meaning, an analytic distinction which clears up much of his worries about meaning and what constitutes it.

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The second argument for life after death is as follows:

“Premise 1 If you cannot even imagine some-thing, then it doesn’t really exist. Premise 2 You cannot even imagine the death of your own mind. Conclusion Therefore, your mind never dies.” (p. 128)

This argument, too, is terrible [4]. Stainton spends close to two pages explaining why this argu-ment does not work; in my view, this, again, shows how important it is to make the objection against one’s own views or arguments as strong as possible. Given the weakness of this argument I will spend no time talking about it; I will merely note that it is im-portant to represent an opponent as the opponent really is. To summarize so far: Stainton has shown weak arguments for the afterlife proponent and has thus made the elementary fallacy of straw man; the lesson to be learned here is that in teaching philoso-phy, one must (i) present an opponent’s arguments as strongly as possible and (ii) cite relevant litera-ture (especially for an introductory class). Now I want to share two arguments Stainton gives in favor of there being no life after death.

`Stainton gives two arguments for there being no life after death. The first is from dualism being a necessary condition for life after death and the sec-ond that no life after death is not that bad. Let us

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begin with the first argument. Stainton writes as fol-lows: “some philosophers have concluded that the human mind is essentially embodied. That is, the hu-man mind is radically unlike, say, the mind of pure intellect that some theorists would assign to God.” (p. 130). I want to make two notes here. First, the term ‘essential’ is a technical term which I want to elaborate on. In the Aristotelian sense [5], an ‘es-sential property’ is one such that the being in question would fail to exist in the absence of that property (whereas an accidental property is one such that the being in question can lose the property and continue to exist as essentially the same thing). So, Stainton’s claim is that the human mind, in the ab-sence of a physical body, would fail to exist. But, is not clear nor an established fact (far from it) that the human mind is essentially embodied. There are good arguments which suggest that the human mind is not embodied, but is temporarily in conjunction with a physical body [6]. Secondly, Stainton misses the fact that although a Divine mind and a human mind are different, if a Divine Mind exists (say, God), then the human mind, in being made by God, is probably constructed so as to be temporarily in conjunction with a physical body (since God has ordained the fate of His creatures to be heaven, hell or (temporar-ily) purgatory—in Catholic teaching). Since Stainton takes as axiomatic “the human mind could not exist without the body” (p. 130), the rest of his argument is what follows from that (and since we have good reason to think his metaphysical axiom is false, the rest of his argument does not work) (p. 132) [7].

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Lastly, Stainton ends the chapter with the fol-lowing consideration: “We end by considering whether this is such an awful conclusion [that there is no life after death]. First, an obvious point: it might be boring to live forever...death sometimes ends great suffering, whether physical pain or men-tal depression or something else.” (p. 132) Stainton here presents an argument which is plainly ignorant of contemporary literature on this topic. For in-stance, in William Lane Craig’s works, he lays out the necessary and sufficient conditions for objective meaning: personal immortality and God. Stainton is correct if his argument is that without God, a long and continuous life does not constitute meaning. But, if Stainton is saying even if God existed and life was infinitely long, then he has inherently failed to interact with good reasons think that God and an in-finitely long life are constitutive of objective meaning. Secondly, though, just because death ends great suffering does not mean death is good, any more than sleeping 24 hours a day is good because the troubles and anxieties of the real world are tough to deal with. Indeed, many sufferings only make sense in light of eternity and not mere death—indeed, suffering becomes a trivial, meaningless and brute fact of human existence without eternity (but, any further commentary on this lies beyond the scope of this paper and so I will not digress into it here). So, Stainton has not provided good reasons to think that eternity would be boring. Continuing, Stainton goes on to respond to the person who says that death is really bad because it is scary. He says

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that since “the time before birth was not awful…you should not expect the time after death to be awful” and that since death is the cessation of oneself en-tirely, after death is nothing and so “you cannot reasonably be afraid of nothing.” (p. 132). Even if Stainton is correct here, which I doubt, one must recognize that the question of “attitudes towards death” promotes an emotionalism which is not truth-conducive. Even if death was better than eternity, it says nothing of ontology. Indeed, if there is eternity which a loving God has constructed for His children, the probability of eternity being a wonderful place (as should be expected), is significantly high even in the face of competing reasons to think that no life af-ter death is preferable. Put otherwise, one should think of the probability of hypotheses relative to evi-dence and background information (as Bayes’ probability theorem suggests), since in the dark—so to speak—it might seem that some hypothesis is cor-rect (until more information is given). By this, I mean to say that the question “what is preferable, an afterlife or no afterlife?” becomes different based on what the truth of the matter is. If God does not exist, an afterlife would not be preferable; if God does ex-ist, an afterlife is preferable; unless there is some defeater for thinking that God and immortality are constitutive of objective meaning, the question “If God exists, is an afterlife worth having?” seems to be a deep, metaphysical and theological question which is fairly simple—yes.

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Stainton’s conclusion is that “there is insuffi-cient evidence to justify belief in the afterlife” and therefore “we should not believe in it.” (p. 133) The problem that is manifest is plainly methodological naturalism. In doing philosophy, Stainton has pre-supposed the naturalism (or atheism) which begets different answers to deep, philosophical questions. In an introductory philosophy book, such as this one, the axioms which one holds ought to be made clear—or more clear—and explicit, and the opposing side should be represented fairly and as strong as possible (even if the arguments are, indeed, bad). But, in Knowledge and Mind, it is methodological nat-uralism borne out of ignorance which is at work. Citing literature on controversial issues is an im-portant and necessary part of an introduction to philosophy; without it, the reader becomes trapped by the knowledge of the author. Further, though, if the student is uncritical—which an introduction to philosophy is supposed to fix—it is very likely that the conclusions of the author become the conclusions of the student (since the student is inherently—or possibly inherently—limited by the author). Further still, in order to cite the relevant literature, one must know the relevant literature. I suspect that if Stain-ton consulted the relevant literature (from substance dualists, Christian materialists and other analytic philosophers of religion and mind), the introductory book would be much more apt at serving as a fairly represented introduction to philosophy of mind and epistemology. Pedagogy of philosophy entails re-sponsibilities; an honest pursuit after truth should be

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without bias and prejudice; most importantly, though, it should be without ignorance [8].

[1] Instead of footnoting each citation from Stainton’s text, after quoting his text I will leave just the page number (with ‘p.’ preceding it). If there is a footnote, it is (i) to make a note or (ii) to cite other literature. I will give the reference to Stainton’s work here. Robert Stainton and Andrew Brooks, Knowledge and Mind: A Philosophical Introduction (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press, 2000). Print. [2] For instance, see William Lane Craig’s Reasona-ble Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd edition (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books), Chapter 2 “De Homine”. [3] See the reference from Footnote 2. [4] Has any philosopher in the history of philosophy given this argument? I suspect not—but I am open to being mistaken here. [5] I encourage those acquainted with Aristotle to correct me if I am wrong on my diagnosis of Aristo-tle’s conception of essential/accidental properties. [6] J.P Moreland and Alvin Plantinga are, in my view, the most prominent defenders of this view. See Moreland’s Consciousness and the Existence of God (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), Chapter 2; see also Plantinga’s essay “Against Materialism” Faith and Philosophy 23, no. 1 (2006): 3-32. [7] Stainton does mention an argument against thinking that there is no personal continuity from before death to the afterlife (which does not rely on

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his previous axiom); however, I have dealt with this problem in my unpublished essay entitled “Phenom-enological or Ontological Sameness over Time? A Critical Response to Natasha Germana’s “Experienc-ing Mortality”” found on my website: https://rashadrehmanca.word-press.com/2016/03/31/phenomenological-or-ontological-sameness-over-time-a-critical-response-to-natasha-germanas-experiencing-mortality/. Ac-cessed May 19th, 2016.

[8] This philosophical and pedagogical prob-lem of ignorance (in certain respects) is not peculiar to Stainton’s introductory work. Consider just one example from page 84 of Alexander Moseley’s A-Z of Philosophy (the first philosophy book I ever read!). In his section on ‘God’, he says the following: “Other theologians turn to logic to provide God’s existence, seeking to deploy proofs analogous to mathematical proofs that are necessarily true. St. Anselm’s famous ontological argument demands that God exists, be-cause, since there is nothing greater can be thought of as God and since existence is a necessary condi-tion of being perfect (i.e., non-existence would be an imperfection!), then God must exist. But the onto-logical argument seeks refuge in definitions rather than substantiating God’s existence…[St. Anselm’s ontological argument] is analogous to proving that the internal angles of an Euclidean (two-dimen-sional) triangle must add up to 180 degrees. A closed definition, no matter how complete, clever or awe-inspiring, it does not equate to an external visible

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entity. Further work has to be done.” (italics mine). What is revealing about this passage is Moseley’s ig-norance of the work that has been done on the ontological argument. His A-Z of Philosophy was written in 2008, implying that he never read the work of Alvin Plantinga (his God, Freedom and Evil (1974), Nature of Necessity (1974) nor his God and Other Minds (1967)). Still worse, he hasn’t even con-sulted Robert Adams ontological argument (in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theol-ogy, 1987) which doesn’t rely on a controversial axiom in the metaphysics of modality (axiom S5) but relies only on the Brouwer axiom. This ignorance—and indeed it is blameworthy given that these works are decades before this introductory book—is peda-gogically destructive and ought to be seen as such.

This paragraph is a prelude to the next essay I have written, and its subject matter is the following: the relationship between literature and philosophy. Now, while this would embody a whole book to talk about this meaningfully (and I suspect this still would not do a justice given the rich history of liter-ature and philosophy), I do think that my insight is a correct one: reading literature as philosophy has in-herent limitations. If one reads philosophy as literature (this I do, for instance, when I read Nie-tzsche), there are limitations here as well (eventually Nietzsche will give an argument—not merely the usual aphorism). So, on both sides, it is important to watch for these limitations; having said that, I do

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think that it is appropriate to read literature as por-traying philosophical ideas; however, what is not appropriate is reading literature and failing to real-ize that there will be limitations present due to deeper misunderstandings or issues which might not be relevant to literature—but to philosophy (or some other discipline). Perhaps a book wants to dis-cuss the nature of the immorality of treating persons wrongfully based on their colour i.e., Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, this is well and good; how-ever, it cannot be seen as answering deeper fundamental questions of moral ontology—perhaps the moral epistemological message is that we have an intuitive grasp of morality through sense experi-ence (or a priori). But the ontological question is for philosophers to deal with. In the following essay, I try to make my thesis as clear as possible. (While the technical language is a little inaccessible, I think the general point emerges throughout the paper).

Winterson and Ontological Commitment from Lan-guage?

In this paper, I want to challenge a notion I have come across in the preface of Jeanette Winter-son’s Sexing the Cherry [1], namely, that “The Hopi, an Indian tribe, have a language as sophisticated as ours, but no tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist” to which Winterson asks the reader “What does say about time?” My thesis (and answer to this question) is thus: nothing. In this pa-per, then, I want to explore the metametaphysical notion of ontological commitment and the problem

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of making ontological commitments from language; after having brought up problems with respect to ontological commitment, I want to refute a positive answer to Winterson’s question by consulting the work of metaphysician Peter van Inwagen in his es-say “Being, Existence and Ontological Commitment” [2] which poses, in my view, a reductio ad absurdum of the argument which thinks that one can read on-tology off language.

Ontological commitment refers to the metametaphysical notion of committing oneself to the existence of a given entity. For instance, when one asserts that ‘the sun is hot’, it is natural to think one has ontologically committed themselves to the existence of ‘the sun’ or ‘heat.’ But, there are exam-ples in ordinary language where this is problematic. For instance, in thinking of sets, properties, func-tions, relations and the like (all of which are abstract objects—if they exist), it is common to assert that these things ‘exist’ but not in an ontologically com-mitting sense, but, rather, in some other non-ontologically committing sense [3]. I shall leave this debate here as it is and just note that it has caused problems for those thinking of the founda-tions of metaphysics as well as those doing ontology (and so the question of ontological commitment has a history). However, I want to introduce what Peter van Inwagen has called the ‘Martian language’ in his essay “Being, Existence and Ontological Commit-ment” and show how if his thesis is correct with

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respect to the ‘Martian language’, a positive answer to Winterson’s question is absurd.

In van Inwagen’s essay, he writes the following:

There are in Martian no substantives in any way semantically related to ‘ˆetre’ or ‘esse’ or ‘existere’ or ‘to on’ or ‘einai’ or ‘Sein’ or ‘be’ or ‘am’ or ‘is’. (In particular, Martian lacks the nouns ‘being’ and ‘existence’. More exactly, the noun ‘being’ is to be found in the Martian lexicon but only as a count-noun—in phrases like ‘a human be-ing’ and ‘an omnipotent being’—and the present participle ‘being’ occurs only in contexts in which it expresses predication or identity: ‘being of sound mind, I set out my last will and testament’; ‘being John Malkovich’.) There is, moreover, no such verb in Martian as ‘to exist’ and no adjec-tives like ‘existent’ or ‘extant’. Finally, the Martians do not even have the phrases ‘there is’ and ‘there are’—and not because they use some alternative idiom like ‘it has there’ or ‘it gives’ in their place. [4]

So, van Inwagen presents a language in which there are certain verbs i.e., ‘to be’ and ‘to exist’ which do not themselves exist. But, one might be skeptical as to how this would fair out in ordinary language. Van Inwagen presents examples of ways in which the Martians are able to get around typical English-like ways of speaking language:

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Let us consider some examples. Where we say, ‘Dragons do not exist’ they say, ‘Eve-rything is not a dragon’. Where we say ‘God exists’ or ‘There is a God,’ they say ‘It is not the case that everything is not (a) God’. Where Descartes says ‘I think, therefore I am,’ his Martian counterpart says ‘I think, therefore not everything is not I.’ [5]

I shall presuppose the viability of van Inwagen’s characterizations here for the sake of argument. It is from this that I want to apply a positive answer to Winterson’s thesis. Supposing that in the Hopi tribe there are no temporal distinctions i.e., past, present and future, if one, from that, supposed that these temporal distinctions therefore do not exist, van In-wagen’s argument would show that existence and being themselves do not exist—which is absurd.

If my thesis is correct, affirming the ability to read ontology from language entails a reductio ad ab-surdum (unless one wants to deny being and existence themselves?).

[1] Jeanette Winterson. Sexing the Cherry. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1992. Print.

[2] Peter van Inwagen, “Being, Existence and Onto-logical Commitment” in Metametaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

[3] By ‘non-ontologically committing’ sense I mean any theory of ontological commitment which would

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preclude being committed to abstract objects via the usage of language.

[4] van Inwagen, 478.

[5] van Inwagen, 478.

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Appendix B: How might one argue for theism?

In this appendix, I want to share an essay I have written defending the fine-tuning argument, an argument from consciousness (in two forms—one explicitly argumentative for theism, and one merely suggesting theistic implications of a study of con-sciousness). This is one way in which one can defend theism via. clearly go through premises, argue for them and show how the argument is valid. Since I think this is effective, I think it worthwhile outline a way in which I defend the argument, in this case, the teleological argument and argument from conscious-ness. These two essays are just further ways in which one can understand the (1) function of natural theological arguments, (2) ways in which one might argue for theism i.e., defending a natural theological argument, answer objections and so forth. While I am a mere amateur, I think that my defenses are ade-quate, and that it is important to see natural theological arguments and how they develop over time (this second theme emerges in the conscious-ness paper).

Defending the Teleological Argument

In this paper, I want to defend the teleological ar-gument for God’s existence formulated by William Lane Craig. Usually, when ‘the teleological argu-ment’ is mentioned, one thinks of William Paley’s design argument in his Natural Theology (1803) usu-ally termed “The Watch Argument.” But, in recent

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decades, cosmologists have discovered that there is a deeper, underlying problem which lurks beneath the improbabilities mentioned in the design arguments of biological organisms. The teleological argument, cast in light of recent cosmological data, begins with the fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life, and concludes that God exists. The premises of the argu-ment, that is, the statements leading to the conclusion, are what need to be evaluated. If the premises are true and the logic is valid, the conclu-sion necessarily follows (this just is the definition of a good deductive argument). Here is the argument as William Lane Craig (WLC) has presented it256:

1. The fine-tuning of the universe is either do to

chance, physical necessity or design.

2. The fine-tuning of the universe is not due to

either chance or physical necessity.

3. Therefore, it is due to design.

Here is the argument in symbolic logic to prove va-lidity:

1. P v Q v R

2. Not-P v Not-Q

256 This formulation has other benefits: avoiding Bayesian prob-

lems, inference to the best explanation problems and so on.

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3. Therefore, R (1)-(2).257

Logically, this argument is valid; it is now time to turn to soundness (the truth of the premises). How-ever, one typical intuition regarding this argument is the following: Why assume that the universe is actu-ally finely tuned? It is to this end that in this paper, I want to delineate instances of fine-tuning of the uni-verse to make explicit the extraordinary improbabilities associated with fine-tuning and show how the best explanation is theism. So, I shall pre-sent examples of fine-tuning to help the argument get off the ground, show how physical necessity and chance are not plausible explanations of fine-tuning, and show how from the inadequacy of these premises theism logically follows. I will then go on to present a strong objection to this conclusion and respond to it. I will conclude that theism is the best explanation of the data and take the stronger position that it is only on Christian theism that the teleological argu-ment works.

In their Philosophical Foundations for a Chris-tian Worldview, J.P Moreland and WLC give examples of cosmological fine-tuning:

“For example, according to British physi-

cist Paul Davies, changes in either αG or electromagnetism by only one part in 1040would have spelled disaster for stars

257 One is more than welcome to add another alternative; how-

ever, it is highly improbable that there is another alternative than these.

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like the sun, thereby precluding the exist-ence of planets…Observations indicate that at 10-43 seconds after the big bang the universe was expanding at a fantastically special rate of speed with a total density close to the critical value on the borderline between recollapse and everlasting expan-sion. Stephen Hawking estimates that even a decrease of one part in a million million when the temperature of the uni-verse was 1010 degrees would have resulted in the universe’s recollapse long ago; a similar increase would have pre-cluded the galaxies from condensing out of the expanding matter. At the Plank time, 10-43 seconds after the big bang, the den-sity of the universe must have been apparently been within about one part in 1060 of the critical density at which space is flat…Oxford physicist Roger Penrose cal-culates that the odds of the special low-entropy condition having arisen sheerly by chance in the absence any constraining princilpes is at least as small as about one part in 10 10 (123) in order for our universe to exist.” (Moreland and Craig 483).

To get an idea of the improbabilities of this situa-tion, consider what Walter Alan Ray, in his Is God Unnecessary?, says (as he explicitly lays out the im-probability Penrose describes):

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“The probability of a universe such as ours existing by random chance, according to Penrose, is one in:

(B) 10100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

0000000000000000

…If M-theory is correct, and there are about 10500 universes, that is nowhere near enough to ensure that the mathematical odds will be met for allowing life to exist on one of those 10500 universes.” (Ray 49-50).

Alvin Plantinga, in his “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments”, has mentioned many examples of fine-tuning; I shall present four he mentions here:

“If the force of gravity were even slightly stronger, all stars would be blue giants; if even slightly weaker, all would be red dwarfs. (Brandon Carter, "Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology", in M. S. Longair, ed, Con-frontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data l979 p. 72 According to Carter, under these conditions there would probably be no life. So probably if the strength of gravity were even slightly

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different, habitable planets would not ex-ist. The existence of life also depends delicately upon the rate at which the uni-verse is expanding. S. W. Hawking "The Anisotropy of the Universe at Large Times" in Longair p., 285: "...reduction of the rate of expansion by one part in 1012 at the time when the temperature of the Universe was 1010 K would have resulted in the Universe's starting to recollapse when its radius was only 1/3000 of the present value and the temperature was still 10,000 K"--much too warm for com-fort. He concludes that life is only possible because the Universe is expanding at just the rate required to avoid recollapse". If the strong nuclear forces were different by about 5% life would not have been able to evolve.” (Plantinga, “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments”).

Robin Collins, a proponent of the teleological argument, gives many examples of fine-tuning as well:

“To illustrate this fine-tuning, consider gravity. Using a standard measure of force strengths--which turns out to be roughly the relative strength of the various forces between two protons in a nucleus--gravity is the weakest of the forces, and the strong

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nuclear force is the strongest, being a fac-tor of 1040--or ten thousand billion, billion, billion, billion--times stronger than gravity. If we increased the strength of gravity a billion-fold, for instance, the force of gravity on a planet with the mass and size of the earth would be so great that organisms anywhere near the size of human beings, whether land-based or aquatic, would be crushed. (The strength of materials depends on the electromag-netic force via the fine-structure constant, which would not be affected by a change in gravity.) Even a much smaller planet of only 40 feet in diameter--which is not large enough to sustain organisms of our size--would have a gravitational pull of one thousand times that of earth, still too strong for organisms of our brain size, and hence level of intelligence, to exist. As as-trophysicist Martin Rees notes, "In an imaginary strong gravity world, even in-sects would need thick legs to support them, and no animals could get much larger" (2000, p. 30). Of course, a billion-fold increase in the strength of gravity is a lot, but compared to the total range of the strengths of the forces in nature (which span a range of 1040 as we saw above), it is very small, being one part in ten thou-sand, billion, billion, billion. Indeed, other calculations show that stars with lifetimes

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of more than a billion years, as compared to our sun's lifetime of ten billion years, could not exist if gravity were increased by more than a factor of 3000. This would have significant intelligent-life-inhibiting consequences (see Collins, 2003). (Collins, “The Case for Cosmic Design”).

The evidence for fine-tuning is astonishing. Cases such as these present the following question: What is the best explanation for the data of fine-tuning—since it is actually descriptive of the actual world? Well, there are three alternative hypotheses: Physi-cal necessity, chance and design. Let us begin with physical necessity.

Physical necessity is the thesis that the con-stants and quantities that the initial conditions have are necessary values, that is, the values could not have been otherwise. This modal claim is fallacious, however. Just because something is actually the case, does not imply that it is metaphysically impossible for it to be otherwise. Collin’s pointed out that “the fine-tuning for life of the cosmological constant is estimated to be at least one part in 10^53, that is, one part in a one hundred million, billion, billion, bil-lion, billion, billion” which means that the following counterfactual is minimally possible: If it were the case that one part was changed, then it would be the case that there would be no life. Even if you accept CCP (Causal Closure of the Physical), one could still argue that in a finite set of possible worlds {p1…pn}

at least one possible world has different values, that

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is, its not contradictory that in one possible world P there is no life and in another P* there is. If it is not a contradiction, then life existing in the cosmos is a contingent proposition—not a necessary one—which implies that physical necessity is false. So, chance and design are left. Let us continue to consider chance.

The chance hypothesis can ultimately be for-mulated in two ways. First, it can either mean that the universe that came into being—implying causal finitism, the idea that the universe has a finite num-ber of causes (and thus a beginning)—out of sheer luck (and so the values the initial conditions have are absolutely random). Secondly, it can mean that there are so many universes that at least one in the ensem-ble, so to speak, will be life-permitting. I will dismiss the first interpretation since it is metaphysically im-possible (as WLC points out)—it involves causation ex nihilo in a state of pure nothingness, that is, the absence of anything—including absence of proper-ties i.e., the property of having ‘causal powers.’ My attention is thus on the second formulation. To this, I concur with WLC as he argues that the Many Worlds Hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis that there truly exists a collection of universes with different operative laws does not account adequately for fine-tuning:

“In the first place, as a metaphysical hy-pothesis, the Many Worlds Hypothesis is arguably inferior to the Design Hypothesis because the latter is simpler. According to

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Ockham's Razor, we should not multiply causes beyond what is necessary to explain the effect. But it is simpler to postulate one Cosmic Designer to explain our universe than to postulate the infinitely bloated and contrived ontology of the Many Worlds Hypothesis. Only if the Many Worlds the-orist could show that there exists a single, comparably simple mechanism for gener-ating a World Ensemble of randomly varied universes would he be able to elude this difficulty.” (Craig, “Theistic Critiques of Atheism”).

WLC’s argument relies on Ockham’s Razor, a perti-nent epistemic virtue to any good philosophical thesis. Indeed, while it might be argued that in quan-tum physics all you have is indeterminacy—after the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle—it does not follow that a unified and complete physics is not preferable to a non-unified and messy physics. For instance, even Stephen Hawking, the great atheistic quantum cosmologist, notes that ‘elegance’ is a crite-rion for a good scientific theory. (Hawking 51). To deny that a theory which is simple over a theory that is not-simple because of its implications is ad hoc. Since independent justification for a position cannot rest on mere ad hoc grounds, the chance hypothesis

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does not work since the design hypothesis is inher-ently simpler (God might have complex thoughts, but is Himself simple).258

The question of whether or not design is the best hypothesis now arises (since chance and physi-cal necessity do not work). Kevin Scharp has raised the following objection, namely, that if you argue that chance and physical necessity do not work, you have to show why God would want to create the uni-verse. (Scharp and Craig, “Is there evidence for God?”). In other words, if the theist does not give a good reason to suppose that God would create the universe, he or she is not justified in saying that God actually created it. This objection just misunder-stands the nature of a disjunctive syllogism (that if P v Q v R, if not-P and not-Q, R logically follows), since it is irrelevant what motives God has. None-theless, giving Scharp the benefit of the doubt, the (Christian) theist does have an explanation as to why God would (and did) create the physical universe. Tyler Journeaux, who is an MA student of philo-sophical theology at Oxford university, says the following in response:

“…the Christian (at least) can give an ac-count of God’s motive. In the doctrine of the Trinity one finds the idea of God whose love is shared between the persons

258 In the same place, WLC gives three other reasons why the

chance hypothesis does not work.

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of the Godhead; each person loves the oth-ers with a sort of outpouring of love, a self-giving love. The kind of love which is the precondition of, and makes sense of,

Kenosis (κένωσις). Why would such a God want to create a world? Well, He has an internal source of motivation: to love (with all that entails). Why did he create a world of rational free agents who can choose to enter into relationships with him? So that he could love, could pour Himself out (Kenosis) in love, et cetera…His nature, exemplified by the outpouring and self-giving love of the three persons, gives God a plausible mo-tive for creating other persons with whom He might enter into a love-relationship. He creates out of, and as an expression of, that love which characterizes his Nature as a community.”259

Since God exists as a relational (or communal) being in and of Himself, the love which God outpours to human beings is an incommensurable good which properly describes the reason for His creation: He willed that we might have the chance of entering into a loving relationship with Himself. It is here that the the-istic explanation—more specifically the Christian

259 This was retrieved from email correspondence.

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theistic explanation—is the preferable one. The fail-ure of physical necessity and chance leave one with the hypothesis that God created the universe.260

The improbability associated with fine-tuning examples make clear how difficult it is for the chance and physical necessity hypothesis to succeed as ex-planations. While Christian theism is the best explanation, skepticism might be preferred to avoid Christian theism. This attitude reminds me of C.S Lewis’ response to the objection that “if so stupen-dous a thing [the Supernatural] exists, ought it not be obvious as the sun in the sky?” to which Lewis re-plied

“When you are reading a book it is obvi-ous (since you attend to it) that you are using your eyes; but unless your eyes begin to hurt you, or the book is a text book on optics, you may read all evening without once thinking of eyes…the fact which is in one respect the most obvious and primary fact, and through which you alone you have access to all the other facts,

260 Why not many ‘gods’? Here an appeal to Ockham’s Razor is

typically thought to be the most appropriate reason why one God will do (and it is the route WLC takes). Why not the God of Islam, for instance? I leave this aside; but, it should be noted that the God of Islam is not the Greatest Possible Being since Allah’s nature does not exemplify the totality of love (whereas in Christianity God does (John 4:8)). The arguments (and Qu’ran verses) can be found here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/concept-of-god-in-islam-and-christianity: Accessed September 16th, 2016.

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may precisely be the one that is most eas-ily forgotten—forgotten not because it is so remote or abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious. And that is exactly how the Super-natural has been forgotten. (Lewis 337).261

Works Cited

Craig, William Lane. “Concept of God in Islam and Christianity.”

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/concept-of-god-in-is-lam-and-christianity: Accessed September 16th, 2016.

Craig, William Lane. “Theistic Critiques of Athe-ism.” Abridged version in The Cambridge

Companion to Atheism, pp. 69-85. Ed. M. Martin. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Accessed September 16th

261 It is easy to see here how poorly constructed many argu-

ments are against the existence of God and how many socio-politically accepted propositions are inconsistent with the truth of theism. For instance, essentialism with respect to human persons is something like this on theism. (Deductive Closure Principle: If S knows P and P->Q, S knows that Q). Some person P knows that God exists and God’s existence implies essentialism about human persons; therefore, P knows that essentialism about human persons is true. (This conclusion is widely rejected, and yet is the one which follows from the conclusion). It is incredible that people do not rec-ognize this fact—but many philosophers, I think, are often widely unaware of the work being done in analytic philosophy of religion i.e., William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Robert M. Adams, Peter van Inwagen, Richard Swinburne, J.P Moreland, et cetera.

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2016. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/theistic-critiques-of-atheism#ixzz4KOKXpgDW

Collins, Robin. “The Case for Cosmic Design.”. Ac-cessed May 17th, 2016:

http://infidels.org/library/modern/robin_collins/de-sign.html#laws.

Hawking, Stephen and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. New York: Bantam Books. 2010.

Print.

Lewis, C.S. “Miracles” in The Complete C.S Lewis Sig-nature Classics. New York, NY:

HarperCollins Publishers. 2002. Print.

Moreland, J.P and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.

Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press. 2003. Print.

Plantinga, Alvin. "Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Ar-guments," Lecture presented at the 33rd Annual

Philosophy Conference, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, October 23-25, 1986.

Ray, Alan Walter. Is God Unnecessary?: Why Stephen Hawking is Wrong according to the Laws

of Physics. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse Books. Print.

Scharp, Kevin and William Lane Craig, “Is there evi-dence for God?”. Debate Transcript. Ohio

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State University, USA. February 2016, The Veritas Forum. Accessed September 16th, 2016. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/debate-is-there-evi-dence-for-god#ixzz4KOa6JVvF

Theistic Explanations of the Ontology of Conscious-ness

Consciousness is ontologically perplexing. Fyodor Dostoevsky has remarked that consciousness is “infinitely superior to two times two makes four”; Soren Kierkegaard echoes “If there were no eternal consciousness in a man…what would life be but des-pair?” In recent decades, the philosophy of mind, alongside its contributory scientific counterparts, have faced Thomas Nagel’s (1979) sober confession as to the status of consciousness. Consciousness is, Nagel suggests, “what makes the mind-body prob-lem really intractable.” (p.165). Though consciousness causes metaphysical problems in the mind-body problem, there is a minority of philoso-phers who argue that the ontology of finite and irreducibly subjective conscious experiences calls for an explanation.262 It seems to some, further, that a

262 Asides those who have denied the existence of consciousness

altogether, there have been broadly two methods by which an expla-nation of consciousness has proceeded; either a personal (theistic) explanation is given, or a scientific (natural) explanation. For a re-jection of contemporary explanations of consciousness altogether but still admits the possibility of an explanation, see the work of Thomas Nagel (2012). The personal (theistic) explanations are usu-ally construed the context of an AC. The first attempt at such a personal (theistic) explanation is found in John Locke (1959). The

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purely scientific explanation will not provide an ade-quate fundamental explanation for the existence of consciousness. This is controversial; however, it is in a particular area of this controversy that I want to explore an important natural theological argument, namely, the argument for the existence of God from the existence of consciousness (AC).263 Two im-portant defenders of the AC, Richard Swinburne

AC has also been developed phenomenologically; see Catholic phi-losopher Edith Stein (2002). For an examination of her argument, see Karl Schudt (2008). For developments by contemporary philos-ophers of religion, see J.P Moreland’s book long treatise on the argument from consciousness (2008), Robert Adams (1987) and Richard Swinburne (1979). For a response to traditional AC argu-ments, see Kevin Kimble and Timothy O’Connor (2011). For Moreland’s response to recent objections to his AC at the 63rd An-nual Meeting of the Theological Evangelical Society, see J.P. Moreland (2015). For a naturalistic theory, see Paul M. Churchland (1996) (the citation is from Quentin Smith and Aleksandar Jokic (2003). This citation from Smith and Jokic (2003) also contains the-ories which are both naturalist/non-naturalist with regard to explanations of consciousness. For a survey of contemporary de-bates with an “objective of defending a particular kind of naturalist (scientifically acceptable) explanation of phenomenal consciousness” see Peter Carruthers (2000). For neuroscientific proposals of con-sciousness from a philosophical standpoint, see Rex Welshon (2011). For an overview and interesting survey of the philosophical debates surrounding consciousness see Ned Block, Owen Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere (1998). For an additional list of citations which exemplify attempts to reduce the mental to the physical for a mate-rialist theory, see Thomas Nagel (1979, p.165 (Footnote 1)).

263 Now, logically moving from the existence of consciousness to the existence of God might seem presumptuous as a ‘metaphysical leap’; however, I intend to show that the inference from conscious-ness to the existence of God serves as the best explanation for the ontology of consciousness. So, I will simply presuppose that this in-ference (from consciousness to the existence of God) is at least

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(1979) and Robert Adams (1987)264 argue that an ex-planation of psycho-physical laws, that is, laws correlating psychological (mental) states and physi-cal (brain) states. However, the traditional AC has been challenged both in its structure and its func-tion; and, as such, Timothy O’Connor and Kevin Kimble’s “The Argument from Consciousness Revis-ited.” (2011) suggests that the existence of consciousness contributes to the natural theological argument from fine-tuning. O’Connor and Kimble agree with the traditional AC defenders i.e., Swin-burne and Adams, that consciousness raises the probability of theism, however, it is only in virtue of the AC shifting its functional role in contributing to a design argument that the probability of theism is thereafter raised. In juxtaposition with their chal-lenge, I will suggest that J.P Moreland’s seminal text Consciousness and The Existence of God (2008) successfully answers O’Connor and Kimble’s argu-ment against the traditional AC. So, schematically I will lay out Swinburne’s argument, explore the ob-jection presented by O’Connor and Kimble, and respond with a thought experiment suggesting that O’Connor and Kimble’s hypothesis to be probably false on theism, and argue that the AC construed by

logically possible—that is, not entailing a contradiction—and there-fore is among the possible explanations of consciousness. From this presupposition, I will then move to explore attempts to formulate a successful AC.

264 I will present Swinburne’s argument in detail; Adams’ argu-ment, though closely related, is manifest in the critique O’Connor and Kimble make in their “The Argument from Consciousness Re-visited.” (2011).

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Moreland is the best current model or attempt at formulating a successful AC. Ultimately, I will argue that although O’Connor and Kimble provide an al-ternative AC, Moreland’s deductive AC model is the most epistemically virtuous and successful AC.

Swinburne and Adams have offered their own formulations of the AC; however, I will explore Swinburne’s argument more exhaustively.265 In Swinburne’s The Existence of God (1979), he formu-lates an AC by first constructing an epistemological framework. He begins by distinguishing types of ex-planations and the types of arguments relevant to his AC model. He distinguishes between personal and scientific explanations. For the sake of simplic-ity, the question of ‘explanation’ (what constitutes it,

265 Though Swinburne and Adams’ arguments are differently

presented, their central points (theses) are similar. Alvin Plantinga, in his “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments” (1986) classifies per-haps the central scope and claim of Swinburne and Adams’ argument from (what he denotes as) the ‘Argument from Colors and Flavors’: “What is the explanation of the correlation between physical and psychical properties? Presumably there is an explanation of it; but also it will have to be, as Adams and Swinburne say, a personal, non-scientific explanation. The most plausible suggestion would involve our being created that way by God.” This citation was retrieved from William Lane Craig’s “Does God Exist?” (n.d). Thus, I will present Swinburne’s argument and therefore only make textual references to his work(s) and not Adams. I do this for two reasons. First, Swin-burne’s Bayesian formulation of the argument is helpful for thinking about probability considerations. Secondly, Swinburne’s account is taken in conjunction with all other arguments (which serves as part of the k value in Bayes’ theorem) and thus his argument is all the stronger insofar as it is not taken individually. Though this may be controversial, I leave this aside as it is beyond the scope of my paper.

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its nature and justification et cetera) will not be dis-cussed here.266 In his view, the former is an explanation which is brought about by a rational agent acting intentionally (Swinburne, 1979, p. 32). The latter, however, arrives at an explanation for some phenomenon in the absence of such personal agency. Thus, applied to the AC model, Swinburne is suggesting that a personal, not scientific, explana-tion best accounts for the existence of consciousness.267 Swinburne then turns to epistemo-logically differentiate C-inductive and P-inductive arguments. A C-inductive argument is an argument such that the premises contribute to raising the probability of the conclusion; a P-inductive argu-ment is such that the conclusion is more probable than not given the premises of the argument.268 So, to use a theoretical scientific example, the existence of the electron, though not empirical, has the theo-retical virtue of being explanatorily powerful. So, if one grants its ontology inasmuch as it is pragmati-cally justified, its explanatory power might serve as a reason to think the electron actually exists. (I do not mean to assert that this is a current approach to the electron, I am just showing how establishing the

266 Swinburne, though, does do his philosophical groundwork

for pegging down ‘explanation’ (regarding its nature and justifica-tion). See, Richard Swinburne (1979, Chapters 2 and 3).

267 The move from ‘personal’ to ‘theistic’ explanation is an in-ference J.P Moreland (2008) makes as well; however, I will not discuss the inferences cogency inasmuch as it lies beyond the scope of this paper.

268 Moreland’s (2008) characterizations and summaries of Swin-burne’s argument have been particularly helpful here.

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truth of a conclusion and establishing premises which raise the probability of the conclusion are dis-tinct). As such, the deductive argument in question serves as a C-inductive argument. Given this episte-mological background, Swinburne construes the AC as to increase the probability of God’s existence, that is, on a Bayesian Model (Swinburne, 1979, p.64) (where h is the hypothesis, e the evidence and k the general background knowledge:

P(e/h.k) P(h/e.k) = _______ x P(h/k)

P(e/k)

For Swinburne, then, the probability of God’s exist-ence on a Bayesian model, in conjunction with the AC, brings about the conclusion that God’s exist-ence is more probable than not; in other words, C-inductively the truth of theism is more probable than not. He concludes that “A priori, theism is perhaps very unlikely, but it is far more likely than any rival supposition” and hence “our phenomena are substan-tial evidence for the truth of theism.” (Swinburne, 1979, p.290).

Given Swinburne’s epistemological framework and Bayesian considerations, the AC is structured to raise the probability of theism, not establish conclu-sively its truth. In Swinburne’s view, theistic (personal) explanation would amount to “God[’s] intervention in the natural order bring[ing] about

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[human persons]” (Swinburne, 1979, p.290).269 In juxtaposition to this, the scientific model of reality, operative strictly on scientific explanation and fun-damental laws, makes the existence of consciousness improbable.270 Thus, agents which are conscious, embodied and effect-producing through their inten-tions is much more probable on theism.271 Swinburne then moves on to make terminological distinctions between mental and physical events, a precursor for the essential premise of the AC. He takes mental events as “one in which it is not logi-cally possible should occur unexperienced”; for instance, “thoughts, feelings, sensations, imaginings, conscious decisions” (Swinburne, 1979, p.161)272 and

269 Theistic (personal) explanation here applies iff (if and only

if) Swinburne’s arguments for God’s having good reasons to create persons with the aforementioned properties i.e., embodiment, is suc-cessful.

270 I make this conclusion (rather hastily) inasmuch as intui-tively on a naturalist causal story or ontology, matter/energy obeying the fundamental laws of physics is a priori unlikely to bring about consciousness. Even if this a priori thought is incorrect, a pos-teriori evidence is lacking. If this claim is in fact to hasty (and I am sure it will be thought to be), J.P Moreland (2008) explores epis-temic virtues, particularly ontological basicality, which serves to demonstrate the improbability of consciousness on naturalism (which I will subsequently speak of).

271 Inasmuch as spatial considerations preclude a full explana-tion of Swinburne’s argument for this contention, it should be noted that 1) Moreland (2008) goes more in-depth establishing this claim and 2) I will make explicit Moreland’s argument for it later subse-quently.

272 In Swinburne’s later work (2013), he has defined much more thoroughly mental and physical events, alongside further distinc-tions and classifications. He begins a series of definitions as follows:

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the like are all mental events. Contrarily, brain events are essentially physical events. Given these definitions, the materialist, Swinburne argues, “needs laws, not merely a collection of generaliza-tions correlating brain-events and mental events.” (Swinburne, 1979, p.169).273 The materialist, if she/he is to satisfy the generation of psycho-physical laws, must generate a scientific (or natural) explana-tion of the laws and would thus bring about a scientific explanation. Applying Swinburne’s argument to Bayes’ probability theorem, Swinburne summa-rizes his argument: “Let k be the premisses of the arguments which we have discussed so far, viz., that there is an orderly (and beautiful world). Let e be the existence of conscious men with brains of the kind which they have. Let h be, as before, the hypothesis

“a mental event [is] along the same lines as one to which the sub-stance involved has privileged access, and a physical event as one to which the substance involved does not have privileged access, and a pure mental event as a mental event which does not entail a meta-physically contingent physical event as that substance” with the implication that “no mental event is identical to or supervenes on any physical event.” (p.70). Whether or not his argument is con-sistent with his later definitions lies outside the scope of this paper.

273 Two notes should be made here. First, I shall use the termi-nology of ‘psycho-physical’ as opposed to ‘mental and physical’ or ‘mental and brain events’ as ‘psycho-physical’ is perhaps more con-ducive to focus on the relationship between the generation of laws regarding consciousness (or phenomenal states of consciousness) and the physical. Second, Swinburne’s characterization here of the men-tal is seemingly aligned with Robert Stainton and Andrew Brooks’ (2000, p.235) conception of ‘psychological explanation’ in describing human actions, that is, actions which appeal to a person’s reasons for acting (i.e., intentionally acting for some reason, feeling a specific way for some reason, et cetera).

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of theism—that there is a God. P(e/~h.k) is low” and therefore “the argument from consciousness is a good C-inductive argument for the existence of God.” (Swinburne, 1979, p.174). I have not presented objections to Swinburne’s view insofar as the next paragraph will challenge the functional role of the AC as well as the validity of Swinburne’s AC argu-ment as he presents it.

O’Connor and Kimble (2011) in their “The Ar-gument from Consciousness Revisited”, are skeptical about traditional AC-type arguments as functionally raising the probability of theism.274 They direct their critique as responding to Swinburne and Adams and characterize their argument as such: “[Swinburne and Adams] both argue that there can be no—or, more cautiously, that it is very unlikely that there can be a—systematic scientific or natural connection between physical properties and experiential quali-ties that would explain why they are correlated in the patterns that they are.” (p.134). Thus, for Swin-burne and Adams, the natural (scientific) account of what I have called ‘psycho-physical laws’ is vastly improbable in the absence of rational, intentional personal agency (a ‘personal explanation’, Swinburne

274 O’Connor and Kimble (2011) spend the first four sections of

their essay rejecting contemporary attempts to formulate a materi-alist account of phenomenal experience. In my paper, I will not mention their arguments against those accounts insofar as they are not incumbent upon my argument. I will take it for granted that their critique of those arguments are true. For their defense against such materialist accounts, see Sections I-IV of their essay.

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says). But O’Connor and Kimble reject this and ar-gue the following: “[Swinburne and Adams’] versions [of the AC] are defective, since they over-look a naturalistic form of explanation that is available even on a robustly dualistic view of con-scious states” and therefore the AC “may more plausibly be recast by treating the very form of ex-planation of conscious states we outline as a further datum in the currently popular fine-tuning version of the design argument.” (O’Connor & Kimble, 2011, p.110).275 So, the traditional function of the AC was to provide evidence for the hypothesis of theism; however, O’Connor and Kimble challenge this con-tention and argue that the structure of traditional AC arguments entail problems which can be over-come through a function-shift of the traditional AC (so that it now contributes to the design-argument). They begin their critique with primary considera-tions concerning qualia, that is, the felt-like or phenomenal character of experience. They note that Swinburne does not admit of qualia being quantifia-ble; however, they dismiss this on the grounds that qualia might admit of quantification (in the quantita-tive, not logical sense). To use their example, qualia might display or be in geometrical relations.276 Now,

275 O’Connor and Kimble (2011) cite evidence of the finely tuned

constants of the universe in the work of J.D. Barrow and F.J. Tipler, as well as Brandon Carter. For their reference, see page 138 of their article. For an elaboration of the natural theological argument from fine-tuning (often called the ‘teleological argument’), see J.P. Mo-reland and William Lane Craig (2003).

276 Here, O’Connor and Kimble reference David Chalmers (1996, p.135) work The Conscious Mind.

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elsewhere Swinburne responds to such a criticism by clarifying his statement by means of making a dis-tinction between qualia being measured absolutely, and qualia being measured relative to other qualia experiences. Since Swinburne admits this for mental states i.e., beliefs, and not explicitly qualia, I am making an analogical argument by extension. Swin-burne argues that there can be measurements of (to use his example) beliefs; but, these beliefs can only be measured relative to each other. He argues that beliefs can be stronger than another, and so forth and thus beliefs can be measured relative to each other not, however, absolutely. (Otherwise there would need to be a standard and that, on Swin-burne’s view, does not exist).277 Unlike Swinburne, Adams admits of qualia being quantifiable; but, Ad-ams notes that there remain two problems for a scientific theory of consciousness, namely, 1) the problem of a hypothesized law correlating psycho-physical only describing, and not explaining, why they are correlated as they are and 2) the problem of “finding a mathematical relationship between the qualia of the different modalities.”278

O’Connor and Kimble respond to Adams’ claim by arguing that Adams is correct in his analy-sis until he precludes any form of explanation at all. They suggest that the “form of explanation that

277 For Swinburne’s argument in full and for the reference I

have made, see Richard Swinburne (2014). 278 This quote is from Adams (1987) cited in O’Connor and

Kimble (2011, p.135).

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non-panpsychist qualia realism precludes is a reduc-tive and maximally unified explanation” and, further, “admitting primitive phenomenal qualities that caus-ally interact with certain kinds of structured physical states is also to give up the aspiration for maximal theoretical unification.” (O’Connor & Kimble, 2011, pp.135-136). Here, O’Connor and Kimble argue that the implications of such a view is that the aforemen-tioned properties are emergent “robustly” (in an ontological sense, they argue). These emergent properties, then, entail “correspondingly irreducible laws that chart their patterns of instantiation and their patterns of instantiation and their contribution to the dynamical evolution of physical systems.” (O’Connor & Kimble, 2011, p. 136). It might be tempting here to think that Adams’ first argument still holds. Suppose that O’Connor and Kimble’s ar-gument is true and that the laws describing the patterns of instantiations can be measured mathe-matically. It seems that this does not extend to be an explanation; rather, it merely describes the phenomena itself. It seems that O’Connor and Kimble anticipate such an objection, and so go on to explain why they think that there is an explanation of the psycho-physical laws. They then go on to distinguish two kinds of causal dispositions. The first kind involves what they call “locally determinative” causal disposi-tions found in, for instance, small-scale systems. This sort of causal disposition involves, to use their example, “negatively charged particles to repel one another” (O’Connor & Kimble, 2011, p.136). Contra-rily, the other causal disposition is as a configuration

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of some organized system which has a causal dispo-sition to, or at least contributes to, bring about (or generate) an emergent property. The argument so far, then, brings about an important consequence, namely, that causal disposition can apply to neural states (since neural states are essentially conjunc-tions and configurations of matter). They give the following example: “if we ask why neural state N1 gives rise to an experience of phenomenal blue, ra-ther than phenomenal yellow, there will be a true answer involving a fundamental disposition of the fundamental constituent particles of N1 toward just such an effect in just such a context, a disposition that is essential to them.” (O’Connor & Kimble, 2011, p.136). So, it is in virtue of the causal disposi-tion of the constituents of a neural configuration (N1) that a phenomenal state arises. Hence, to ask ‘why did one have a phenomenal state of purple?’ is in principle reducible to asking ‘why did the constit-uent materials (properties) of the neural configuration (N1) have a causal disposition to bring about the phenomenal state of purple?’ Thus, O’Con-nor and Kimble argue that “the phenomenal realist may reasonably suppose the existence of basic, gen-eral laws connecting neural-state types and families of phenomenal-state types (corresponding more or less directly to distinct sensory modalities).” (O’Con-nor & Kimble, 2011, pp.136-137). Inasmuch as this is true of the fundamental constituents of reality, it fol-lows that neural states can bring about phenomenal states.

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The inevitable question arises (as O’Connor and Kimble note): Since fundamental physical enti-ties could have properties having causal dispositions far different from the dispositions they do have (i.e., phenomenal states), or not at all, why do the funda-mental particles in the actual world exhibit the causal disposition to give rise to phenomenal states? Now, their answer here does not answer why some phenomenal character PC correlates to some neural configuration NC. It seems that their explanation is arbitrary. For instance, it could be the case that some neural configuration N2 has constituents which bring about the PC of purple. It seems that reality could have been constructed to have a different neu-ral configuration N3 which brings about the PC. But, this objection conflates contingency with arbi-trariness (which is false). To give an example, when riding a bicycle, one can freely decide to bike by the waterfront or by the local university. Suppose that one decided to bike by the water (the sun was setting and it was a marvellous sight). This decision, though contingent (i.e., one could have rode their bike by the local university) does not imply the choice was arbitrary; rather, the choice was made by a rationally acting person and therefore a sufficient reason for the choice was present. Analogically, it is in virtue of the truth of theism that the causal disposition of a neural configuration to bring about phenomenal states is to be expected. Now, although the hitherto objection does not succeed as a problem for O’Con-nor and Kimble, a suppressed premise in the objection still remains. While O’Connor and Kimble

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argue that the probability of the particles having causal dispositions towards phenomenal states is higher on theism than its negation and therefore “the argument from consciousness is best developed as adding to the data of fine-tuning” (O’Connor & Kimble, 2011, p. 139), it still remains why on theism this construction of reality would be actualized ra-ther than another. I suggest that J.P Moreland’s deductive AC in his Consciousness and the Existence of God (2008) is the best model so far of a successful AC.

O’Connor and Kimble’s argument, as it rests on the causal dispositions of the constituents of neu-ral configurations to bring about phenomenal states, is not, I shall argue, successful. There are reasons to doubt the ontological status of the causal disposi-tions of the constituents of neural configurations bringing about phenomenal states. There seems to be a thought experiment which makes their argu-ment is improbable. Given that some neural configuration N1 brings about some phenomenal state P1 in virtue of the causal dispositions of the constituent properties, it follows that these phenom-enal states hold independently of a subject. Now, although this objection might not work on a natural-istic framework, in my view theism makes this improbable. I will argue this point through a thought experiment.

Suppose that there is a robot, say, R. R is an essentially material thing. R, further, is created by

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some engineer (say, Dylan). Now, there are two im-portant considerations here. First, suppose that Dylan constitutes R in such a way that R ends up having something strikingly relevant to the human brain. In fact, suppose Dylan somehow (in his ge-nius), was able to duplicate the human brain in its entirety. R would, then, have neural states. So, if O’Connor and Kimble are correct in their analysis, it follows that a robot R could have phenomenal states (in virtue of the constituent materials having causal dispositions to bring about phenomenal states). So, abbreviated, where NC is a neural configuration, PC the property of having a phenomenal character of experience and T as denoting some instance of time: Dylan has PC iff he has NC at T. This, at least on the-ism, seems improbable. I say this for two reasons. First, if their argument is correct, any sort of mate-rial object, simply in virtue of its constituent properties being arranged in a particular way, would exemplify phenomenal states. It seems more likely that it is human persons who exemplify phenomenal states and that, further, these phenomenal states are possessed by rational thinkers who acts through her/his intentions. Secondly, following the hitherto objection, their analysis leads to the conclusion that it is arbitrary what has phenomenal states.279 This ar-bitration does not seem to hold well on theism. Swinburne, for instance, suggests that God has good

279 Here, I am not arguing that the contingency of x requires

that x is arbitrary. Rather, I am only arguing that Swinburne lists a sufficient reason God has for creating human persons with these phe-nomenal experiences.

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reasons to bring about human persons; thus, O’Con-nor and Kimble would have to, if my argument is correct, explain why God would bring about the ability for human persons to have the capacity in principle to bring about neural states which bring about phenomenal states. Further than that, they would have to explain why there would be better benefits to having this state of affairs (i.e., properties which realize or bring about phenomenal states) be-ing realized in the actual world rather than alternative state of affairs, say, the explanation given by traditional AC-type argument which suggests that psycho-physical laws exist in virtue of a per-sonal explanation, not in virtue of the dispositions of the constituent properties of a configuration of mat-ter. But, perhaps this is not a fair interpretation of O’Connor and Kimble. It may well be the case that it is contributory to human moral responsibility to have the ability to do bring about phenomenal states, and, therefore, the capacity to do so is just another way in which the capacity for freedom of the will and our moral responsibility is realized. In response, I do not find this argument to suffice as a probable explana-tion. It seems that this argument does not explain why it is in principle possible to bring about neural configurations which in turn bring about phenome-nal states. In other words, it seems more likely, instead, that God would bring about human persons exemplifying these properties insofar as they are good for human persons. If my assessment is correct, then it seems that O’Connor and Kimble’s thesis has a consequence which I regard as inconsistent with

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theism (or at any rate unfriendly to it). It seems to me that the burden of proof lies on O’Connor and Kimble to show that this in principle logical possibil-ity would be good for both human persons as well as i.e., robots. Given these considerations, I conclude that although O’Connor and Kimble provide an al-ternative to the traditional AC, it is improbable that psycho-physical laws are explainable in terms of the causal dispositions of particular neural configura-tions.

Though Swinburne and Adams have provided formulations of the AC, J.P Moreland (2008) has provided a different formulation which, I suggest, formalizes the AC in important ways and which makes considerable progress in the construction of AC-type arguments. Though Moreland’s argument is consistent with Swinburne and Adams’ argument, Moreland’s has benefits with regard to its deductive construction and the criteria he sets out prior to the construction of the argument. Prior to the deductive argument, Moreland argues that “three issues that inform the adjudication between rival scientific theo-ries are relevant to AC.” (Moreland, 2008, p.28).280

280 By labeling these epistemic virtues ‘scientific theories’ I do

not interpret Moreland to mean that the AC is a scientific hypothe-sis; rather, the AC is a natural theological argument which may or may not have successful theological implications (the premises of which may or may not be scientific—here it is irrelevant whether or not they are). If this seems dubious, consider the following. 4+6=10 is an arithmetical or mathematical truth; to say ‘this hypothesis is not scientific’ has no bearing on its truth-value. This may be true and simultaneously not scientific. So, the AC does not have to be a

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He argues that basicality, naturalness and epistemic val-ues are criteria which hold epistemological weight in scientific theory acceptance. He takes basicality to mean essentially a phenomena which is ontologically basic. For Moreland, “Consciousness is ontologically basic for theism since it characterizes the fundamen-tal being.” (Moreland, 2008, p.29). With regard to naturalness, Moreland argues that some entity (or something close in the neighborhood of it), should be “at home” in the theory. That is, the entity in ques-tion should not be “out of place” in a particular ontology. For instance, if in some possible world all that exists are causally inert abstract objects, that is, numbers, relations, propositions et cetera, and no concrete particulars, it is not natural that there should exist a materially existent, concrete book, say, Plato’s Republic or Shakespeare’s Hamlet, just existing amidst the abstract objects. Lastly, epistemic values roughly amounts to “a normative property, which, if possessed by a theory, confers some degree of rational justification on that theory.” (Moreland, 2008, p.30). For instance, a theory’s possessing the property of simplicity (to use Moreland’s example) is an epistemic value which does not in and of itself justify a theories truth, but which attributes a rough degree of rational justification on the theory itself. Since Moreland takes consciousness to be basic, nat-ural and possessive of epistemic values on theism,

scientific hypothesis. (If one rules this out epistemologically i.e., sci-entism, this is ad hoc and it lies beyond the scope of this paper to address the issues here).

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this criteria serves as a contributory precursor to his AC. He mentions three forms of the AC as such: in-ference to the best explanation, Bayesian and deduction. Since inference to the best explanation has been implicitly (and somewhat explicitly) dis-cussed and Swinburne’s Bayesian AC has been explored, I will lay out Moreland’s (2008, p.37) de-ductive argument:

(1) Mental events are genuine non-physical

mental entities that exist.

(2) Specific mental event types are regularly

correlated with specific physical event

types.

(3) There is an explanation for these correla-

tions.

(4) Personal explanation is different from nat-

ural scientific explanation.

(5) The explanation for these correlations is

either a personal or natural scientific expla-

nation.

(6) The explanation is not a natural scientific

one.

(7) Therefore, the explanation is a personal

one.

(8) If the explanation is personal, then it is

theistic.

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(9) Therefore, the explanation is theistic.

This deductive argument reaches the same conclusion as the traditional AC-type arguments, namely, that the best explanation of mental events or psycho-physical laws is a theistic explanation. However, there are three reasons why this argument is, in my view, conducive to yield a correct formula-tion of an AC. Firstly, this deductive argument essentially formalizes the traditional AC-type argu-ments, that is, the premises are explicitly stated and they incorporate the essential theses and premises of the traditional AC. Secondly, one cannot dismiss the AC on the basis that it relies on Bayes’ theorem (i.e., one could argue that it does not follow from the axi-oms of the mathematical calculus of probability). So, such an ad hoc attempt of avoiding the AC does not work given the deductive construal of the argument. Lastly, Moreland’s argument yields clarity which, as he himself notes, allows one to “gain clarity on the precise considerations that most likely provide the basis for an IBE [Inference to the Best Explanation] argument or for assignment of probabilities to key factors in the Bayesian approach.” (Moreland, 2008, p.37). Moreland is not arguing that Swinburne and Adams had it wrong; on the contrary, he is arguing that their arguments can be inflated with this deduc-tive construal allowing for more accurate probability assignments. Thus, Moreland’s deductive formula-tion, whether or not successful, is the best formulation of the AC.

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In this paper I have argued that although the argument by O’Connor and Kimble provide an alter-native to the traditional AC, Moreland’s deductive AC yields the most successful AC model. I have ex-plored the Bayesian AC formulated by Swinburne and have shown that his argument, if correct, pro-vides evidence in an accumulative case for theism. I began by laying out his epistemological framework for his AC, and distinguished between a P-inductive from a C-inductive argument, and a personal expla-nation from a scientific explanation. I then moved on to explore the most prominent objection to the AC from O’Connor and Kimble. I displayed their argu-ment concerning the causal dispositions of the constituents of neural configurations bringing about neural states and argued that this account is (mini-mally) improbable on theism. Then, I explored Moreland’s deductive AC and argued that the argu-ment, insofar as it formalized the AC, didn’t depend on Bayes’ theorem and clarified the AC, was the best AC model. While I intend my paper to contribute to the literature on the relationship between conscious-ness and the existence of God, my intention is to provide an area for further exploration, namely, on the construction of AC-type arguments. Although I have not been able to consider important epistemo-logical and metaphysical issues surrounding consciousness which might serve as counter-exam-ples and defeaters for AC-type arguments, the scope of this paper, I hope, extended to open dialogue be-tween those working on the AC and those thinking about the perplexing ontology of consciousness and

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the relevant, important theological implications it possibly has.281

Works Cited

Adams, R. M. (1987). The virtue of faith and other es-says in philosophical theology. New York: Oxford

University Press.

Block, N. J., Flanagan, O. J., & Guzeldere, G. (1997). The nature of consciousness: Philosophical

debates. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Carruthers, P. (2000). Phenomenal consciousness: A naturalistic theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Churchland, P. M. (1995). The engine of reason, the seat of the soul: A philosophical journey into the

brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Craig, W. L. (n.d.). Does God Exist? Retrieved De-cember 16, 2015, from

281 I would like to thank here Professor Pietro Pirani who has

selflessly overlooked the development of this essay, provided in-sightful comments on the original draft and for his ineliminable suggestions during our discussions.

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http://www.reasonablefaith.org/

Kimble, K., & O'Connor, T. (2011). The Argument from Consciousness Revisited. Oxford Studies in

Philosophy of Religion Volume 3, 110-141. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603213.003.0007

Locke, J. (1959). An essay concerning human under-standing (Vol. 2). New York: Dover Publications.

(Original work published 1689).

Moreland, J. P. (2008). Consciousness and the existence of God: A theistic argument. New York:

Routledge.

Moreland, J. (2011, November 17). J.P. Moreland Re-sponds to Criticisms of the Argument from

Consciousness. Retrieved December 16, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2003). Philosophical foundations for a Christian worldview. Downers

Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Nagel, T. (2012). Mind and cosmos: Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost

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certainly false. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nagel, T. (1979). Mortal questions. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

Plantinga, A. (October 23-25, 1986). Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments. Lecture presented at the

33rd Annual Philosophy Conference, Wheaton Col-lege, Wheaton, Illinois.

Schudt, K. (2008). Edith Stein’s Proof for the Exist-ence of God from Consciousness. American Catholic

Philosophical Quarterly, 82(1), 105-125. doi:10.5840/acpq200882122

Smith, Q., & Jokic, A. (2003). Consciousness: New philosophical perspectives. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Brook, A., & Stainton, R. (2000). Knowledge and mind: A philosophical introduction. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press.

Stein, E. (2002). Finite and eternal being: An attempt at an ascent to the meaning of being. (K. F.

Reinhardt, Trans.). Washington, D.C.: ICS Publica-tions, Institute of Carmelite Studies.

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Swinburne, R. (2013). Mind, brain, and free will. Ox-ford: Oxford University Press.

Swinburne, Richard. (November 4th, 2014). The Ar-gument from Colors and Flavors. Lecture presented at

the Plantinga Workshop, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

Swinburne, R. (1979). The existence of God (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Welshon, R. (2011). Philosophy, neuroscience, and con-sciousness. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University

Press.

Bibliography from the Natasha essay:

Works Cited

Germana, Natasha. “Experiencing Mortality: The Possibility of Retaining Personal Identity in Resur-rection.” The Semi-Colon: Essay Journal IX.II (2015): 25-27.

Moreland, J.P, and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2003. Print.

Karl Popper, Subjective Conscious Experiences and the Methods of Psychology

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Consciousness raises methodological, episte-mological and explanatory problems in psychology and philosophy of mind. How to interpret mental phenomena—consciousness particularly—has been of focal importance to both psychologists and philos-ophers of mind. Whether or not it is justifiable or warranted to explain, reduce or eliminate conscious-ness from the contemporary data is an issue of great psychological importance. Thus, I will focus on the psychological evidence for subjective conscious ex-periences by the 20th century philosopher of science Karl R. Popper (1977/1985) and then shift the dis-cussion to consider further epistemological and phenomenological problems for a reductive theory of consciousness. So, in this paper, I shall argue that Karl Popper’s interpretation of the Gestalt Switch as providing evidence for the existence of subjective conscious experiences suggests, in conjunction with phenomenological and epistemological considera-tions, that the anti-reductive route to consciousness will be most conducive to constructing a fundamen-tal theory (or explanation) of consciousness. This has methodological implications for approaches to mental phenomena generally and so the conclusion of this paper leaves an open research project for fur-ther work on psychological evidence for subjective conscious states.

An important two-fold question is raised by the existence of consciousness. First, how do we

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know that subjective conscious experiences exist?282 If this question yields a positive answer, then what methods are there to detect it? So, before any analysis of consciousness these preliminary, foundational questions merit attention. To answer the first ques-tion requires some sort of evidence. Here, there seems to be three routes. The first route I shall call the ‘behaviorist route’, the second I shall denote as the ‘reductive route’ and the third the ‘anti-reductive route.’283 The ‘behaviorist route’ denotes two theses, namely, that 1) there can be no interior evidence for consciousness i.e., appeals to introspection and therefore 2) what constitutes evidence for subjective conscious experiences will have to be such that they are inferred and explained simply by virtue of a per-son’s behavior. On the other hand, the ‘reductive route’ is the view that mental phenomena or con-sciousness (or subjective conscious experiences) is reducible to matter. In other words, the linguistic terms in psychology of a human person as having i.e., thoughts, feelings, desires et cetera, are all es-sentially reducible to a person’s material constituents (or the conjunction of material constitu-ents i.e., a brain state); what has been called

282 Throughout the essay I shall use the term ‘consciousness’ to

be roughly synonymous with ‘subjective conscious experiences’ in that experiences of the ‘conscious’ sort entail a possessor (at least in the case of human persons) of the conscious state; conscious states, then, is particular to a person subjectively.

283 I am not arguing against the whole or entirety of behavior-ism; rather, I am attacking one of its central theses, namely, that mental phenomena can be accounted for simply by analyzing a per-son’s behavior.

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“personal explanation” becomes reducible to scien-tific terminology (Stainton & Brooks, 2000). Contrarily, the ‘anti-reductive route’ to subjective conscious experiences 1) admits of phenomenologi-cal or interior evidence of mental phenomena insofar as the person in question’s testimony is reliable and such that the phenomenal character of experience (qualia) is presumed to also be reliable; and, the anti-reductive route argues that 2) subjective conscious experiences, mental phenomena and the like are not reducible to anything material (although it might be correlated with it in multiple and interesting ways) (Nagel, 2012). Before moving on to discuss the psy-chological evidence for consciousness, I have two comments to make concerning the behaviorist route. But, first I shall comment on the behaviorist route and present psychological evidence for subjective conscious experiences.

There are many epistemological issues with behaviorist route. With respect to my first comment, I would like to raise two epistemological problems and one phenomenological for the behaviorist route. First, there is a hidden presupposition of verifica-tionism (Ayers, 1946/1952) in the behaviorist route since a principle problem with ‘introspective evi-dence’ is that none of the testimony can be verified. Whether or not this is a faulty epistemology (and I do believe it is faulty), it is a presupposition which dominated in 20th century logical positivism, but is now rendered restrictive and self-refuting (Craig & Moreland, 2003, pp. 154-155). Secondly, there exists

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a particular variety of scientism that underlies this view. Scientism is the view which states that knowledge, if it is to be counted as knowledge, must be attained from the hard sciences i.e., physics, chemistry and biology; any claim to knowledge out-side the hard sciences cannot be counted as knowledge. Like verificationism, scientism fell into the same self-refuting category (Craig & Moreland, 2003, pp. 346-348). So, epistemologically the behav-iorist route leads to a self-refuting epistemology. To turn to the phenomenological objection to the be-haviorist route, I shall employ the argument that Nagel (2012) adopts. In lodging a critique against contemporary attempts to incorporate consciousness into a naturalistic framework in conjunction with the epistemology of scientism, Nagel attacks the behav-iorist approach to mental phenomena as such. He claims that the behaviorist route (or anything close to it) are inadequate inasmuch as “they leave out something essential that lies beyond the externally observable grounds for attributing mental states to others, namely, the aspect of mental phenomena that is evident from the first-person, inner point of view of the conscious subject.” (Nagel, 2012, p. 38). The introspective or phenomenological life of a person is ineliminable from analysis of the mental such that a theory which eliminates it leaves a gap in our under-standing of the mental. So, Nagel (2012) suggests, although the behaviorist route can account for the physical, external manifestations of the mental, it “leaves out the inner mental state itself.” (Nagel, 2012, p. 38). The second comment I would like to

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make regarding the behaviorist route is a decon-structive one with a positive counterpart. Although the behaviorist route has epistemological and phe-nomenological issues, Karl Popper’s interpretation of the Gestalt Switch provides evidence for subjective conscious experiences while simultaneously meeting the standards of the behaviorist route.

Karl Popper and Sir John Eccles’ work (1977) is a rigorous defense of interactionism, that is, the view according to which the self is a real and objec-tive feature of reality and it is in conjunction, and interaction with, a physical body.284 Popper, in set-ting out his project of establishing interactionism, begins with an ontological framework, that is, a framework positing what does and does not exist. He distinguishes three ‘worlds’ (W1, W2, W3) and characterizes them as follows (Popper & Eccles, 1977/1985, p.16):

World 3 (6) Works of Art and of Science (including technology)

(the products of the human mind) (5) Human Language. Theories of Self and of Death

World 2 (4) Conscious-ness of Self an of Death

284 I will hereafter refer to Popper only for two reasons. First, I

am only familiar (and hopefully competent) with Poppers section in the book and not Eccles. Secondly, I am only discussing Poppers in-terpretation of the Gestalt switch—not the overarching project of the book i.e., establish interactionism.

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(the world of subjective experiences) (3) Sentience (Animal Consciousness)

World 1 (2) Living Or-ganisms

(the world of physical objects) (1) The Heavier Elements; Liquids and Crystals

(0) Hydrogen and Helium

So, the existence of consciousness falls into catego-ries (3) and (4) and are therefore part of W2. For Popper, as it is stated above, W2 is the world of sub-jective experiences; further, while the legitimacy of such an ontological framework is beyond the scope of this paper, the table above will help to contextual-ize and conceptualize where subjective conscious experiences lie. Popper then moves on to criticize materialism and its varieties—beginning with, among other characterizations, what he calls ‘Radial Behaviorism.’ The ‘behaviorist route’ and the ‘Radi-cal Behaviorism’ seem to me to be synonymous and thus I will not make technical distinctions between Popper’s characterization and my own view. (If our conceptions of behaviorism are not synonymous, Poppers argument still poses challenges to the be-haviorist route—the technical distinction is at best irrelevant to my argument). Popper’s argument hinges on an important principle, namely, that “we can establish empirically, by behaviorist methods, that subjective, conscious experience exists.” (Popper

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& Eccles, 1977/1985, p. 66). The point is not that the behaviorist has to commit herself to the reliabil-ity of introspection as a source of knowledge concerning mental states; rather, the threshold of the argument is that the reductive route to con-sciousness is unavoidable—even on a restrictive epistemology i.e., behaviorist route.285 Popper makes

285 I would like to make two comments here. First, Popper has

another argument which, though not relevant to my essential thesis, merits to be stated here. He argues that “Just as in physics we intro-duce theoretical entities – in order to explain our observation statements… so we can introduce, in psychology, conscious and un-conscious mental events and processes, if these are helpful in explaining human behavior” (Popper & Eccles, 1977/1985, p. 62). While it lies beyond the scope of this paper to explore the legitimacy of this argument, I would like to make two brief comments. First, the fundamental question with respect to subjective conscious expe-riences is the ontology of such experiences—not its explanatory power. Secondly, one of J.P Moreland’s criteria (2008) for assessing the legitimacy of a scientific theory is ontological basicality, that is, how “at home” the postulated entity is in the theory itself. Now, without a Bayesian framework, it is simply not known whether or not conscious and unconscious events are ontologically basic i.e., it is only relative to an ontological framework entailing background information and evidence that the probability of the hypothesis in question can be assessed. So, it seems presumptuous to postulate such an entity pragmatically without justification (or, minimally, an epistemic virtue i.e., ontological basicality, which would bestow on the theory some degree of justification). Secondly, while I have, I hope, shown that psychological methods i.e., the Gestalt Switch has implications for the existence of subjective conscious experiences, whether or not these experiences are reducible to physical constitu-ents (or not) is beyond the scope of this paper.

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explicit the Gestalt Switch he has in mind (Popper & Eccles, 1977/1985, p.65)286:

The purpose of this American Indian/Eskimo Ge-stalt Switch example is, Popper suggests, that “we can voluntarily and actively build up the profile of the Indian by looking at his nose, mouth, and chin, and then proceeding to his eye. As to the Eskimo, we can start to build him up from his right boot” and therefore “we can formulate experimental questions about these activities which lead to intersubjectively repeatable answers.” (Popper & Eccles, 1977/1985, p.65). The behaviorist route to consciousness, in re-quiring a non-introspective approach to subjective conscious experiences, is thus accommodated via the psychological method. While the Gestalt Switch ex-ample provides one example of “intersubjectively testable experiments” yielding the conclusion that “men have conscious experiences”, it follows that the

286 This photograph of the Gestalt Switch in this paper is the

one used by Popper taken from R.L Gregory and E.H Gombrich (1973) which I have retrieved from an online chapter of Popper and Eccles’ work (1977/1985).

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reduction of mental phenomena to the evidence be-havior provides is, as far as the psychological method is concerned, at best unnecessary (Popper & Eccles, 1977/1985, pp. 65-66).287 Interpreting the Gestalt Switch in this way has two essential implica-tions.

If Popper’s interpretation of the Gestalt Switch is correct, I shall argue that what follows is that subjective conscious experiences are not elimi-nable and that a future project for psychology will be applying different methods to provide evidence for subjective conscious experiences.288 With respect to

287 As I have explained in an aforementioned footnote, Popper’s

approach to subjective conscious experiences generally, that is, sub-jective conscious experiences are posited inasmuch as they provide theoretical virtues i.e., explanatory power, the legitimacy of this claim—while disputable—seems to hint at an important insight here. It might be, as Popper suggests, that because the behaviorist route is rendered improbable by evidence derived from a particular method of psychology which provides evidence for subjective con-scious experiences i.e., the Gestalt Switch, it seems to follow that either 1) subjective conscious experiences are, even under a behav-iorist epistemology, justified to posit ontologically or 2) that subjective conscious experiences are ineliminable and will be an in-dispensable to a fundamental philosophical anthropology (or, one might say, an adequate ‘ontology of the human person’).

288 An objector might here retort: Why psychological, not sci-

entific investigation? To this, I must simply admit that I am not hopeful regarding approaches to subjective conscious experiences from the scientific method. I am persuaded, rather, that there is a constant correlation between psychological states and physical states (psycho-physical laws); here, at best, science could provide ev-idence that they are constantly correlated i.e., experiencing a sensation of pain (there is a physical component and a correspondent mental component) but not evidence as psychology could provide

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eliminability, subjective conscious experiences can only be eliminated if they do not exist; any prag-matic approach, I suggest, will be at best ad hoc. For instance, if some mental state M is said to exist which explains i.e., the sensation of blue, then M provides an explanation for the sensation of blue. To eliminate M (on any grounds other than evidential grounds) and suggest an alternative theory for the sensation of blue, say M*, is to simply deny M and not show ontologically that M does not exist. M* is ad hoc inasmuch as it begs the question against M and purports to show, based on i.e., theoretical vir-tues, that M does not exist. Analogously, since evidence for subjective conscious experience is sug-gested from the Gestalt Switch, eliminating subjective conscious experiences without justifica-tion seems to necessitate an ad hoc argument and consequently deny the best explanation of the Ge-stalt Switch. With respect to the latter contention, that there exists a further research project for psy-chology to provide other possible and alternative methods by which evidence can be given in support of the existence of subjective conscious experiences, I think there exists important implications of subjec-tive conscious experiences existing—I shall name two.

i.e., Gestalt Switch. (Whether or not this is an adequate or inade-quate stance regarding the scientific method in this area, I shall proceed no further since it is at best irrelevant to my argument in this paper).

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First, subjective conscious experiences are phenomenologically known; in one’s subjectivity, it is a simple experiential truth that subjective con-scious experiences occur and therefore any evidence for this proposition will suggest that our phenome-nological intuitions are valid. Secondly, if subjective conscious experiences exist, the reductive route to consciousness is further constrained; while the re-ductionist programme has as its goal reducing consciousness to physical constituents which is in-compatible with our moral intuitions i.e., regarding persons as “irreplaceable” with the counterpart im-plication that “in being irreplaceable [persons] are clearly very different from machines.” (Popper & Ec-cles, 1977/1985, p. 3). While this claim is controversial, it seems that whether or not this is true, this provides minimally pragmatic motivation for further work in psychology and also motivation for consistency; a consistent philosophical anthropology must not entail all aspects of a person inasmuch as these aspects are ineliminable inasmuch as con-sistency is a necessary condition for modeling persons. I suggest that psychology, with further work, will make accessible more methods by which evidence can be provided for subjective conscious ex-periences.289

289 Popper does note more ways in which subjective conscious

experiences can be shown i.e., optical illusions, conscious patients with brain stimulations via an electrode resulting in re-living par-ticular past experiences, et cetera (Popper & Eccles, 1977/1985, pp. 63-66).

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Given that there exists psychological evidence for subjective conscious experiences, it is an interest-ing question whether or not there could exist phenomenological evidence for subjective conscious experiences. It seems that the evidential reasons for granting the ontology of subjective conscious expe-riences leaves open the mere possibility of such phenomenological evidence. However, it is my spec-ulation and conjecture that any argument from the phenomenology of a person will rely on an episte-mology, that is, considerations relevant to the theory of knowledge. For instance, Alvin Plantinga (2011) argues that properly basic beliefs are such that in the absence of some defeater i.e., a reason to deny the belief in question, one is rational in affirm-ing the belief. So, under this rubric (which I am laying out here broadly) one should take their expe-rience of subjective conscious experiences as phenomenologically valid (inasmuch as it is, accord-ing to Plantinga, epistemologically valid).290 So, if subjective conscious experiences are posited justifi-ably both evidentially and epistemologically (derivative from a person’s phenomenology), it seems to follow that the reductive route to con-sciousness is severely challenged inasmuch as it will have to account for subjective conscious experiences known both by one’s phenomenology and the evi-dence of psychology; this leaves open a further research programme for psychology in detecting

290 I am using ‘valid’ informally here; I am not denoting the us-

age by logicians i.e., ‘valid’ def. the truth of the conclusion following from the premises.

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other methods of providing evidence for subjective conscious experiences.

In this brief paper, I hope that I have shown how psychological methods i.e., the Gestalt Switch, makes probable the existence of subjective conscious experiences even in conjunction with a behaviorist criteria for assessing mental phenomena. There exist vast areas in this paper I have not explored, most notably the problem of the potential reducibility and eliminability of consciousness to physical constitu-ents and the problem of prior probabilities with regard to ontological frameworks prohibiting—or making vastly improbable—the existence of con-sciousness. While my intuitions suggest none of these reductive models are accurate,291 a research project for future psychological work on the problem of consciousness—and subjective conscious experi-ences more generally—is available here; the task is to use alternative psychological methods to provide evidence for subjective conscious experiences which, I suggest, will appeal both to strict epistemologies i.e., behaviorist, as well as challenge the reductive route to consciousness. While the aforementioned

291 I have, in a currently published essay “Theistic Explanations

of the Ontology of Consciousness” (2016), argued that the existence of consciousness contributes to raise the probability of the truth of theism. The rough draft of the paper can be accessed at my personal blog (2016) and where it is formally published (the reference will be given in the appendix). The thesis of the paper suggests that reduc-tive, eliminative, materialist and physicalist models of consciousness do not work (or at any rate are much less probable that the explana-tion theism provides).

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Gestalt Switch evidence meets the behaviorist crite-ria, it is worth noting that evidence, notably phenomenological evidence, provides sufficient evi-dence for subjective conscious experiences; however, it is with further work in psychology that, even un-der strict or narrow epistemologies, subjective conscious experiences can be shown to exist. Other important questions will arise from further work and if, as I suggest, the anti-reductive route to conscious-ness is taken, the existence of consciousness and subjective conscious experiences will possibly yield conclusions having philosophical, psychological and theological implications.292

Works Cited

Ayer, A.J. (1946). Language, truth and logic. New

York: Dover Publications. (Original work published

1952).

292 This paper is written from a philosophical perspective. That

being said, I am overlooking many contemporary and historical is-sues in psychology that either I am not competent to answer, am wholly ignorant of and/or space does not allow for. I hope my work here makes probable a particular thesis or, minimally, shed light on subjective conscious experiences from a unified perspective i.e., bringing psychological work into the realm of contemporary ana-lytic philosophy of mind.

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Gregory, R.L., & Gombrich, E.H. (1973). Illusion in

nature and art. Duckworth: London.

Moreland, J.P. (2008). Consciousness and the existence

of God. New York: Routledge.

Moreland, J.P., & Craig, W.L. (2003). Philosophical

foundations for a Christian worldview. Downers

Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press.

Nagel, Thomas. (2012). Mind and cosmos: Why the ma-

terialist neo-darwinian conception of human nature is

almost certainly false. New York: Oxford University

Press.

Plantinga, Alvin. (2011). Where the conflict really lies:

Science, religion and naturalism. New York: Oxford

University Press.

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Popper, Karl., & Eccles, J. C. (1985). The self and its

brain. New York: Springer International. (Original

work published in 1977).

Rehman, R. Theistic explanations of the ontology of con-

sciousness. Retrieved on January 22, 2016 from

https://rashadrehmanca.wordpress.com/

Stainton, Robert., & Brooks, A. Knowledge and mind:

A philosophical introduction. Cambridge, Massachu-

setts and London, England: MIT Press.

Swinburne, Richard. (2013). Mind, brain and free

will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Appendix C: Russell’s Challenge to St. Aquinas Bertrand Russell has argued the following

against St. Aquinas: “The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but spe-cial pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.”293

I find this problematic for three reasons. First, this is a false dilemma: Either you form arguments dispas-sionately about the conclusion, or you base it on authoritative foundations. Surely there is a third op-tion (and this is obvious given something like Plantinga’s reformed epistemology). Secondly, this not entirely factually (textually) correct. When you read St. Aquinas, he presupposes that Christianity is true (no doubt), but uses reason and evidence to ar-rive at his conclusions. While one could attack the character of St. Aquinas for doing this, this does nothing to affect the arguments themselves. Just be-cause, for instance, I want you to be wrong and so spend years on end compiling evidence against you does not mean that when I present my evidence to you, it is somehow less true than if I had gone about a question dispassionately. I suspect something like an ad hominem is going on here. Thirdly, and this is the most fundamental critique of Russell here, it is

293 Ref. History of Philosophy. Pg. 463.

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not true that just because someone presupposes some presupposition P for their view V, that P is false because one regards V as false. In other words, just because I adopt a view and I regard the conclu-sions that follow from it to be true, does not mean the view I adopt is false a priori. What it means is that given good grounds for the view I adopt, I am justified in thinking that the conclusions that follow from it are also true. Let me explain.

Conditional Probabilities (CP) (P|A/B) and the Deductive Closure Principle (DCP) (If P knows Q and P-> Q, P knows Q) are tightly knit concepts which is helpful for considering probabilities in axiomatic the-ories, especially in science and religion. Suppose that we evaluate the truth of some proposition P. Given axioms, say, A1…An, a person S believes P on the basis of the presumed axioms. In this case, with respect to conditional probabilities, P is probable—more proba-ble than not, that is—given the axioms (and so S accepts P). Suppose, further, that P->Q (Q being a logical entailment of P). It is, then, appropriate to say that given the axioms, Q is more probable than not. I find that this is very significant for understanding many issues found in conceptual problems which arise in science. Here is an example from quantum physics:

1. Jones, having reviewed the evidence for the Many Worlds Interpretation E1…En, believes that the Many Worlds Interpretation to Quan-tum Mechanics is true.

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Jones, so far as we know, does not rely on any pre-vious axioms in holding that the Many Worlds Interpretation is true. Indeed, Jones can be said to merely make his judgement on the evidence presented to him; however, this might become problematic when other factors come into consideration. For in-stance, suppose that the evidence in question was inconclusive, that is, didn’t amount to a proof and that, being persuaded by other considerations i.e., some other epistemological hypothesis, Jones decided that the epistemological hypothesis—since it was, let us say, inconsistent with the Many Worlds Interpre-tation—amounted to rejecting the Many Worlds Interpretation (since Jones had better grounds for thinking that the epistemological hypothesis was more probable than his evidence for the Many Worlds Interpretation. Jones has applied conditional proba-bility in the following way: Suppose A is “Many Worlds Interpretation” and B “Epistemological Hy-pothesis”, it would mean that for Jones (P|A/B) = 0. Two inconsistent propositions have a 0 probability when taken conjunctively. (To see this consider the proposition “at some time T some object O exists and simultaneously does not exist”, a proposition with 0 probability since it is impossible—logically and met-aphysically). So, since the evidence in favor or B is higher than A, he sees it as (P|A/B) < (P|not-A/B) (in the latter case, the probability amounts to 1. Inas-much as Jones is not being ad hoc here (in denying A on the grounds that he does not like it (and so happens

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to accept B), Jones is perfectly rational in his condi-tional probability. Things are not much different when we consider the following case:

2. Sharon, a theist, believes that the Many Worlds Interpretation to Quantum Mechan-ics is false.

In a nutshell, Jones is pro-Many Worlds, and Sharon is against Many-Worlds. Let us apply CP and DCP here to see what is at work.

For Sharon, she believes that, where A is the

proposition “that God exists” and B “the relevant ev-idence”, that (P|A/B) > .5. She, then, claims to know A (since, on conditional probability, B is more probable than not). But, since theism—some would argue (and I shall just presume it here)—that the Many Worlds Interpretation is logically inconsistent with A, it follows that A->Q (where Q is the proposi-tion that “the Many Worlds Interpretation is false.” So, given the conditional probability of A on B, apply-ing the DCP, Sharon reasonably believes that A and therefore that the Many Worlds Interpretation is false. The question now arises though: What is the conceptual difference between the case of Jones and the case of Sharon? My answer: nothing at all.

Whether it is a theological hypothesis or an ep-

istemic one, it makes no difference regarding the probability of such statements. If S accepts P on the basis that it is more probable than not that P is true

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given Q, it does not matter if P is theological or epis-temological. Even if one accepts P on the basis that they know some other proposition P* which implies P, if P* is a theological hypothesis or historical or sci-entific or whatever, it has no bearing on the truth of P itself. If one denies this, it can be for no other reason than begging the question (and I suspect that this goes on all the time). Think of, then, what Russell said in-itially, and what might be said in response: If St. Aquinas had good reasons for trusting revelation, whatever followed from it would be true—and thus his arguments (even if based on revelation) were good ones despite objections—which he answered anyway.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Emily Lehman for, in her words, “all her vast insight into the content of this book. Her mind is like no other.” She is also the one who, in my opinion, created what could now be called the “Emily Quantifier”, represented as Ex (like the universal/existential quantifier), except the range/scope of the quantifier, when asserted by her, immediate takes the truth-value T. So, Ex(x) is T iff Emily says it is. (This is quite the development in logic, I must say). I would like to thank here Paul Coates, for introducing me to philosophy in an in-sightful way; Bryan Metcalfe, for all his help in thinking out hard questions (and for teaching me in-tellectual honesty); Yousuf Hasan, Tyler Journeaux and Krishna for our invaluable (and only too brief) discussions. I want to thank Lifeline at Western Uni-versity for promoting (and provoking) much thought through discussions of bioethical questions, and for embracing rational discourse on hard moral questions. I would like to thank as well many of the professors I have had at Western University, espe-cially Pietro Pirani. I would like to thank Patrick Sullivan, too, for both teaching me the Catholic faith and for living it out. I would like to thank the rest of my family, friends and everyone else who either helped me think out these hard topics (mostly indi-rectly) and who bought me many of the books I read, use and ultimately hope to help others with. Thank you all very much.