Friday, April 20, 2012

Let'e Squash Some Bugs Part 2, The Butt, Scott Debate

As we continue to examine the things mentioned in the debate, I wish to this time focus on Mr. Scott's comments on the arguments put forth by Mr. Butt.  Mr. Butt presented the arguments from the cosmological, teleological, moral, free will, and a little of the transcendent.  Mr. Butt presented them in a simplistic and general manner I believe due to the time constraints of the debate.  In Mr. Scott's opening statements, he called those arguments simply philosophical and had no meaning.  He kept demanding for evidence.  He simply rejected them as being philosophical in nature and unreasonable.  Here we find another problem with Mr. Scott's view of the issues.  The question of the existence of God is just that, a philosophical question.  It can only be answered in a philosophical manner.

     The Christian faith as defined by Biblical revelation  teaches a number of things which are not restricted to the realm of man's temporal experience as Mr. Scott would have it. It teaches things about an invisible God, His triune nature, the orgin of the universe, the regularity of the created order, angels, miracles, the afterlife, etc.  These are the types of claims which I believe Mr. Scott most often find objections to.
     The objection is that such claims are about transcendent matters, things that go beyond our everyday to day human experience.  The triune Creator exists beyond the temporal order, the after life is not part of our ordinary observations in this world.  Those such as Mr. Scott are accustomed to thinking that people can only know things based upon, and pertaining to, the "here and now".  Since he thinks this way (those who have seen the debate will notice this fact), then the claims of Christianity about the transcendent are an intellectual reproach.

     Those who are not Christians will often assume that the natural world is all there is, in which case nobody can know things about the "super natural" (hence the reason Mr. Scott makes the statement that science never asks why and that the why is irrelevant).  In philosophical circle, discussions and debates about questions like these fall within the area of study known as "metaphysics."  As you might expect, this division of philosophical investigation is usually the hotbed of controversy between conflicting schools of thought.  More recently, the entire enterprise of metaphysics has itself become a hotbed of controversy.
      Over the last 2 centuries a mindset has developed which is hostile toward any philosophical claim which is metaphysical in character.  It is clear that antipathy to the the Christian faith has been the primary and motivating factor in such attacks.  Nevertheless, such criticism has been generalized into a pervasive antagonism toward any claims which are "metaphysical".  This attitude has been one of the crucial ingredients which have molded culture and history over the last 2 hundred years.  It has altered common views regarding man and ethics, it has generated a radical reformation of religious beliefs, and it has significantly affected perspectives ranging from politics to pedagogy  Consequently a very large number of the skeptical questions or challenges directed at the Christian faith are either rooted in, or colored by, this negative spirit with regard to metaphysics.

     Before we can elaborate on Mr. Scott's problem with his statements and the arguments that he presented, it would be helpful to understand better what is meant by "metaphysics".  This is just a technical word that is rarely used outside of the academic circles, it is not even a part of the Christian vocabulary.  Nevertheless, the conception of metaphysics and the reaction to it which can be found will definitely touch and have an impact on the life of the Christian either in terms of the attacks of the faith in which he or she must answer, or even in terms of the way in which they portray the faith in everyday life.
     It is often said that metaphysics is the study of being or studies being, that is, questions about existence.  It asks, what is it to exist?  And, what sorts of things exist?  Thus the meta-physician is interested to know to know about fundamental distinctions (the essential nature of things that exist) and important similarities (the essential nature of the members of these classes).  He seeks the ultimate causes or explanations for the existence and nature of things.  He wants to understand the limits of possible reality, the modes of existing, and the interrelations of existing things.
     It should be obvious, if only in an elementary way, that Christianity propounds a number of definite metaphysical claims.  But we need to understand that Mr. Scott also holds to a philosophical meta-physic himself (even though he would deny this).  It would be profitable to pause and reflect upon an insightful comment by a recent writer in this area.  W.H. Walsh has written, "It must be allowed that the reaction against (meta-physics) has been so violent indeed as to suggest that the issues involved in the controversy must be something more than academic.).  He would be correct.  The issues are indeed more than academic.  They are a matter of life and death-eternal life and death.  Jesus said, "And this is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent." (John 17:3).  However, if the unbeliever can stand on the claim that such a God cannot be known because nothing transcending the physical (nothing :metaphysical") can be known, then the issue of eternal destiny is not raised.  Accordingly, men may think and do as they please, without distracting questions about their nature and destiny.
     The fact is that one cannot avoid metaphysical commitments (no matter how much Mr. Scott tries to "sweep them under the carpet").  The very denial of the possibility of knowledge transcending experience is in itself a metaphysical judgement.  Mr. Scott demands evidence.  I believe that when stating this he is not being forth right with the audience.  When he says evidence in reality he means something that can be placed in the test tube and examined through the avenue of science and experience.  This is why he denies the evidence given in the debate.  Again, this is a meta-physical assumption on his part, that all legitimate knowledge is gained by the scientific method.  Mr. Scott deals with philosophy at every turn in the debate, yet denies that it is relevant to the question.  Friedrich Nietzsche had something to say along these lines when he stated:
     "What provokes one to look at all philosophers half suspiciously, half mockingly, is that they all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration"-most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made absract-that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.  They are all advocates and willy spokesmen to their prejudices which they "baptize" "truths".

     Mr. Scott's arguments can be set up as thus;
     1) There cannot be a non-empirical  source of knowledge or information about reality, and
     2) It is illegitimate to draw inferences from what is experienced by the senses to what must lie outside of          experiences.

     When we listen to the comments made by Mr. Scot in the debate, we can see that the above reflects accurately his meta-physic.  In short, we can only know as factually significant what we cn experience directly with our senses-which nullifies the meaningfulness of meta-physical claims and the possibility of metaphysical knowledge.
      We can begin our response by considering #2 in the above. We should first ask why it is that we should not reason from what is known in sense experience to something lying beyond sensation.  After all, is not this exactly what the empirical scientists do on a day to day bases.  They continually reason from the seen to the unseen, (subatomic particles, computing gravitational forces, warning against the effect of radiation simply on the basis of its effect, prescribing medicine for an unseen infection on the basis of an observed fever, etc.).  It certainly appears capricious for Mr. Scott to prohibit Mr. Butt from doing what is allowed to the scientist!!  Such an inconsistency betrays a mind that has been made up in advance against certain kinds of conclusions about reality.  This is exactly what Mr. Scott was arguing in connection with the teleological argument.  He dismisses it since he cannot seen God.
     Moreover, it is important to notice in #2 above that it is not really relevant to making the case against the Christian meta physic.  Christianity does not view its claims as unguided or arbitrary attempts to reason from the seen to the unseen world-unwarranted projections from nature to what lies beyond.. In the firstplace, the Christan claims that God created this world to reflect His glory and to be a constant testimony to Him and His character (Romans 1:18-20).  God also created man in His own image, determined the way in which man would think and learn about the world, and coordinated man's mind and the objective world so that man would unavoidably know the supernatural creator through the conduit of the created realm.  God intended and made it unavoidable that man would learn about the Creator from the world around him.  This amount to saying that the natural world is not in itself random and without a clue as to its ultimate maning, leaving man to arbitrary speculation.
     Moreover, given the intellectually corrupting effects of man's fall into sin and rebellion against God, man's mind has not been left to know God based on the basis of man's own unaided experience and interpretation of the world.  God has undertaken to make Himself known to man by means of verbal revelation, using words chosen by God which are exactly appropriate for the mind of man that was created by God to come to the correct conclusions about his Creator, Judge, and Redeemer.
     The Christan meta-physic is not the result of a self-sufficient exploration of, and argument from man's unaided and brute emperiical experience, to a god lying beyond and behind experience,  Rather it affirms, on the basis of Scripture's declaration, that our meta-physical tenets rest on the self-revelation of the transcendent Creator.  The Christan meta-physic does not work from man to God, but from God to man (2 Peter 1:21).
      Therefore this anti meta-physical claim by Mr. Scott begs the main question.  If God as portrayed in the Scriptures does indeed exist, then there is no reason to preclude the possibility that man who lives in the realm of nature can gain knowledge of the supernatural.  God creator and controls all things, according to the Biblical account (Gen.1&2; Heb. 1:3).  Given that perspective, God could certainly bring it about that man learns the truth about Him through both the created order and a set of divinely inspired messages.  When Mr. Scott contends that nothing in man's temporal, limited,natural experience can provide knowledge of the supernatural, he is simply taking a roundabout way of saying that the Biblical account of a God who makes Himself known in the created order and Scripture is mistaken.
     This begging the question is sometimes veiled from the unbeliever by there tendency to recast the nature of the Christian meta-physic as man centered and rooted initially in human, empirical experience.  However, the very point in contention between the two meta-physics comes down to the claim that Christan teaching is rooted in God's self-disclosure of the truth as found in the world around us and in the written word.  There is not reason to think the the Christan would be intellectually required to build upon the foundation of human sense experience, unless someone were presupposing in advance that all knowledge must ultimately derive from empirical procedure.  But this is the very question at hand.  Mr. Scott is not supporting his reason for rejecting The Christian meta-physic, it is simply a rewording of that rejection itself.
   
     We are brought then to #1 in the above, the first and foundational step in Mr. Scott's meta-physic.  What are we to make of the assertion "all significan knowledge about the objective world is empirical in nature"?  The most obvious and philosophically significant reply would be that is the preceding statement were true, then, on the basis of that claim, we could never know that it were true.  Why?  Simply because that statement in question is not itself known as the result of empirical testing and experience.  Therefore, according to its own strict standards, the statement could not amount to significant knowledge about the objective world.  It simply reflect the subjective (perhaps meaningless) bias of the one who pronounces it.  Hence, Mr. Scott not only has his own preconceived conclusions, but it turns out that he cannot live according to them (Romans 2:1).  On the basis of his own assumptions he refutes himself.

     The very question of the existence of God is a meta-physical question.  Contrary to the assertions of Mr. Scott, it is a philosophical question and must be answered in that matter.  We have not had time in this post to cover the true nature of evidence, will come later so be on the look out.  The basis of this post is to show the error in the thoughts of Mr. Scott.  He has a meta-physic.  He has a philosophy.  He has a world view.  The question then becomes which is true, his or the Christian?  I contend that it is the Christian meta-physic since it and it alone can stand up to careful scrutiny.  All others have some sort of inconsistency within them.  That includes atheism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, etc...