About This Lecture
What does it mean to prove that God exists, and what must already be true for any proof to make sense? In the opening lecture of The Transcendental Argument for God, Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen examines the relationship between proof, persuasion, faith, and reason. He introduces foundational philosophical questions concerning reality and knowledge, then surveys rationalism, empiricism, pragmatism, and skepticism to expose the difficulties involved in justifying human reasoning.
Against this background, Bahnsen introduces the transcendental approach, which asks what conditions must exist for knowledge and rational thought to be possible. The lecture establishes the foundation for the seminar’s central claim: that intelligible human experience presupposes the Christian worldview.
Table of Contents
- Opening prayer[00:00]
- Why a seminar on transcendental arguments[00:35]
- Thesis: God’s existence is objectively provable[04:53]
- The nature of proof: the argument vs. the arguer[06:51]
- Proof vs. persuasion[11:54]
- Metaphysics vs. epistemology[16:05]
- Faith and reason: against fideism and rationalism[19:12]
- All reasoning rests on faith[25:53]
- Rationalism: Descartes and Spinoza[29:18]
- Empiricism: Hume and the unity of apperception[33:32]
- Common sense and skepticism[41:06]
- Pragmatism: Dewey and Quine[50:49]
- The transcendental approach: preconditions of intelligibility[58:25]
- The cosmological argument and its problems[66:21]
- A transcendental argument: induction and the causal principle[72:48]
- Conclusion: reason presupposes the Christian worldview[78:29]
Scripture References
| Timestamp | Reference | What’s there |
|---|---|---|
| [24:59] | John 14:6 | Allusion: Bahnsen says God, supremely rational and coherent, is the truth itself, as Jesus said. He uses this to argue that Christians should care about truth and reasoning and use their minds to glorify God. He gives no citation; the passage is inferred. |
| [24:59] | 2 Corinthians 10:5 | Allusion: Bahnsen attributes to Paul the instruction to bring every thought captive in obedience to Christ. He uses it to show that Christians use the mind as a subservient tool to glorify God and to argue for Him, which is why he affirms rationality while rejecting rationalism. He names Paul but gives no book, chapter, or verse; the passage is inferred. |
| [44:44] | Romans 1 | Bahnsen cites Romans 1 in the question-and-answer on common sense. From it he holds that everyone believes in the God of the biblical picture, the most commonsensical belief, though people suppress that belief in unrighteousness rather than admit it. He cites the chapter only. |
Explore This Lecture Further
These study aids summarize the lecture’s argument in plain language. They are not a transcript and they are not Dr. Bahnsen’s own words. Each timestamp link takes you to the place in the lecture where the point is made, so you can hear it for yourself. Quotation marks are used only for wording taken directly from the lecture transcript.
Proof vs. Persuasion: Three Distinctions Behind “Objectively Provable”
Bahnsen’s opening thesis is that God’s existence is not only objectively true but objectively provable [05:11]. He says few apologists make that claim today, since most settle for “probable” or “preferable” [05:18], and he links the opposite attitude to the fallibilist tradition, which holds that nothing can be known for sure [06:01]. To explain what he means by “proof,” he draws three distinctions, which he numbers as he goes [13:39] [16:05].
| Distinction | How Bahnsen draws it | Illustrations he uses |
|---|---|---|
| 1. An objective matter, not the arguer’s character or personal need | The truth of God’s existence does not depend on the character or psychology of the people arguing about it, and he warns against the genetic fallacy and ad hominem reasoning [07:22]. Arguments aimed at the character of Christians are, he says, reversible [08:38]. God’s existence is a deeply personal question, yet its truth has nothing to do with anyone’s personal needs or interests [10:08]. He is not embarrassed if told he has a deep need for God, because he says God made him to need Him [11:09]. | Algebra learned from a morally bad teacher [07:56]. Attacking a scientist’s tie instead of his cancer research [14:55]. Preferring Bach or Bon Jovi [10:44]. |
| 2. Proof, not persuasion | An argument need not be accepted by everyone to be conclusive [11:40]. Our culture knows the difference between proof and persuasion [12:35]. Proving God’s existence objectively is not the same as universally persuading people [12:54]. Where a person’s heart has not changed, he will not give in, so the argument sometimes has to be repeated [13:39]. Bahnsen puts the point as “I’m talking about proof, not persuasion” [13:39] | Courtroom procedure and the O.J. Simpson trial [12:01]. A saying Bahnsen says he is told is Plato’s, though he is not sure, about a man convinced against his will [12:54]. |
| 3. Metaphysics, not epistemology: existing vs. being known vs. being proved | Metaphysics deals with what exists; epistemology deals with how we know, and the nature and limits of knowledge [16:05]. Something can exist without being known [16:29], without anyone being able to prove it [17:14], and even when reasons are offered against it [17:44]. Applied to God: His existence is a metaphysical truth that can be demonstrated epistemologically even though not everyone is convinced [18:49]. Bahnsen calls this a “cousin” of the arguer-versus-argument distinction [16:05]. | DNA existing before we knew of it [16:29]. The planet Uranus, suspected before it was proved [17:14]. Bahnsen’s own arguments against having diabetes, despite his doctor’s lab reports [17:44]. |
Summary of the lecture’s point (not Bahnsen’s words): together the three distinctions let Bahnsen say that a proof can be objectively sound without being accepted by every hearer, without resting on anyone’s character or needs, and without depending on whether anyone has yet recognized it.
Faith, Reason, and Autonomy
Bahnsen introduces the faith-and-reason question as an old puzzle that he thinks the transcendental approach will resolve [18:49] [19:32]. His summary of where he stands is “We do not affirm rationalism.” [25:36] Here is how he sorts the positions.
| Position | How Bahnsen describes it | His assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Faith begins where reason ends | Reasoning takes us far in science, medicine, history and the like, but at some point reasoning stops and faith begins; Christians share everyone’s reasoning about natural matters and then add a further “story” of faith [19:49] [20:16]. | He calls this misleading and mistaken [20:16]. His alternative: “Faith is not without reason. Faith is not above reason. Faith is not contrary to reason.” [20:16] |
| Fideism | Christian faith is independent of reasoning: a personal commitment, a voluntary leap with nothing to do with argumentation [20:54]. | He does not endorse it in any sense [20:54]. He holds that Christian faith is not merely reasonable but demanded by reason [21:40]. |
| Rationalism (in the broad sense) | The attitude that man’s mind is the highest authority, or at least autonomous, never bowing to an outside authority [21:40]. | An autonomous man might grant that some god exists but never the Christian God, who does not bow to His servant [22:27]. Trying to use the unbeliever’s own ultimate authority to prove God is the ultimate authority strikes Bahnsen as wrongheaded [22:27] [23:00]. He also points to widespread disagreement in the university as evidence against the mind’s self-sufficiency [23:38] [24:18]. |
| Rationality | Man’s intellectual capability, which Bahnsen likens to a tool [24:18] [28:15]. | He affirms it wholeheartedly, because God made us to think and we bear the image of a rational God [24:18]. The mind is to be used as a tool to glorify God, bringing every thought captive to Christ [24:59]. |
How can Bahnsen say that “all reasoning rests on faith” while also affirming reason? A summary of his steps in this part of the lecture (not his words):
- He affirms rationality as God-given and denies that faith is opposed to reason [20:16] [24:18].
- He denies the autonomy of the mind: the idea that it is self-sufficient and the highest authority [21:40] [23:38].
- He turns the charge around: the unbelieving rationalist’s own rationality rests on faith, because reasoning cannot be justified without a worldview [26:11].
- He says the only worldview that makes rational procedures intelligible is Christianity, so anyone who reasons is borrowing from it or working in terms of it, and faith is foundational to reasoning [26:11] [26:56].
- He describes the whole seminar as an attempt to show that the Christian use of rationality refutes rationalism [25:36].
Note: in this lecture Bahnsen presents the claim that reasoning rests on faith as the thesis the seminar will defend [26:56] [27:09]. The lecture does not give a fuller definition of “faith” in this foundational sense.
Kinds of Proof and Why the Autonomous Approaches Fall Short
Bahnsen divides the kinds of proof people offer into four, calling this a very simplistic overview: rationalist, empiricist, pragmatist, and transcendental [28:50]. The Table of Contents lists “common sense” and “skepticism” separately, but in the lecture common sense is the later form into which empiricism shades [35:45], and skepticism is where Bahnsen says the first three approaches end up [42:01] [53:07], not a fifth approach.
| Kind of proof | What it appeals to | Difficulty Bahnsen raises | Where he says it ends up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rationalist | Deduction from basic truths known as clear, distinct and self-evident [29:16] [29:44]. Examples he gives: Descartes on “I exist,” Spinoza on substance, Leibniz on monads [30:03] [31:38] [32:16]. | The self-evident starting points are disputed. Descartes ends with two kinds of reality, Spinoza with one, Leibniz with many, each from supposedly self-evident foundations [31:38] [32:16]. Bahnsen reports Russell’s complaint that Descartes’ argument begs the question [30:03]. | Subjectivism and therefore skepticism [42:02]. |
| Empiricist | Foundations that are perceptual or commonsensical: to know something is to trace it back to observational certainty [33:15]. | First, the process of tracing claims back to perception requires a credible cognitive psychology that has never been offered [33:15]. Hume found no observation of a continuing self, leaving experience loose and disjoint [34:15] [35:05]; Bahnsen adds that calling himself a bundle of perceptions already assumes a unity [37:52]. Second, the empiricist theory of concepts and meaning cannot itself be traced to observation, so empiricism refutes itself [39:47] [40:31]. | Subjectivism and therefore skepticism [42:11]. |
| Common sense (empiricism’s later form) | What everyone knows, such as holding up a hand and knowing it has five fingers [35:45]. | Bahnsen does not think this is a very good argument [36:33]. An appeal to common sense works only if the notion really is common, and he says very few are [42:26]. Bahnsen says Wittgenstein would hold that past a point you cannot reason with someone using a different language or category scheme [40:53], and each side ends up calling the other a heretic [41:43]. | Conventionalism, relativism and skepticism [43:02]. He says the autonomous search for irrefutable common-sense notions reduces to subjectivism [43:58]. |
| Pragmatist | Success: a procedure is rational if it helps us adapt and accomplish our ends. Pragmatists treat the rationalist and empiricist problems as irrelevant [50:33] [51:22]. Examples he gives: Quine on survival [51:41] [51:52], and Dewey [53:38]. | It presumes we know which ends to pursue [51:59]. To justify rationality by its results you must justify the ends, and the pragmatist cannot do that [52:41] [52:56]. Bahnsen also calls the approach a refusal to face the tough questions [53:25]. | Subjectivism [52:59]. |
| Transcendental | The preconditions for the intelligibility of experience, and how ultimate assumptions are proved [58:57] [61:27]. | Bahnsen raises no difficulty here; this is the approach he endorses. | He says it answers skepticism in a way the foundationalist and pragmatist approaches cannot [65:35]. It defeats skepticism not by self-evident truths, perceptual certainties or success, but by showing what must be true for rational procedures to be intelligible [64:22]. |
Two points Bahnsen adds. First, from a Christian standpoint there are common-sense notions, and the most commonsensical is that God exists; he says from Romans 1 that everyone believes this but suppresses it [44:27] [44:44]. Second, the transcendentalist does not necessarily reject empirical, rational or pragmatic methods: they can be used once ultimate assumptions are justified [60:53]. (The questions and answers at [43:07] are partly unclear in the transcript.)
Where Skepticism Leads: Anarchism or Dogmatism
Inside the pragmatism discussion Bahnsen adds a further claim that the Table of Contents does not separate out. He says “When skepticism wins out, you always end up with either anarchism or dogmatism” [55:03]. The table summarizes his description and his examples.
| Outcome | How Bahnsen describes it | Examples he gives |
|---|---|---|
| Anarchism | Relativism: truth is person-relative and everyone says what is right in his own eyes, with no objectivity [55:03]. | Ethics, and the denial of objective meaning in literature (deconstructionism) [55:51]. |
| Dogmatism | Not only religious dogmatism [55:51]. Disagreement is treated as speaking against reality itself [56:37]. | Communist epistemology [55:51], and political correctness in the university, where promotion depends on fitting the reigning paradigm [56:37]. |
Bahnsen’s own conclusion is that a university committed to objective rationality would need neither dogmatism nor a collapse into anarchism [57:20]. He holds that the Enlightenment ideal of objective, rational inquiry is a good model that is impossible on autonomous presuppositions [57:49], and he admits his hope of rescuing the history of philosophy sounds grandiose [58:07]. These cultural observations are his own judgments, summarized here, not conclusions of the lecture’s philosophical argument.
What Makes an Argument Transcendental?
Bahnsen states the core idea this way: “Transcendental reasoning seeks the preconditions for the intelligibility of experience.” [61:27] He spends several minutes heading off misunderstandings.
| A possible misunderstanding | Bahnsen’s clarification |
|---|---|
| It is one more way to settle particular questions. | It concerns how we prove our ultimate assumptions, not particular conclusions [58:11] [58:57]. It is not about fixing a carburetor or the battles of 1776 [59:23]. It is “not an attempt to settle any specific issue” [64:04] and “an attempt to show that issues are settleable” [64:08]. |
| It rejects empirical, rational and pragmatic methods. | Not necessarily. They are not like chocolate versus vanilla [60:12]. Once ultimate assumptions are justified, those methods can be used [60:53], but they do no good if the skeptic wins in the end [61:14]. |
| “Experience” means sense observation. | He means experience in the broadest sense: internal, imagined, conceptual, computational, not only images of the outside world [61:47] [62:45]. The question is what must be true for any experience to be talkaboutable and arguable [62:54] [63:19]. |
| Any argument for God from common reasoning is transcendental. | Some arguments only try to show that Christianity is very likely, and cannot settle the issue [64:53] [65:08]. The transcendental approach answers the skeptic differently from the foundationalist and the pragmatist [65:35]. |
To see the contrast, Bahnsen takes the cosmological argument and the causal principle and treats them two ways.
| Cosmological argument as Bahnsen describes it | Transcendental treatment of the causal principle | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Empirical premises: we have experienced events being caused, so every event has a cause, and the world as a whole must have a cause, which is called God [66:55] [67:42]. | The causal principle itself, which he calls the foundation of inductive reasoning [73:24] [73:47]. |
| Stance toward presuppositions | It tries to be neutral, setting presuppositions aside and reasoning from observation [73:04]. Of the historical argument for the resurrection he says it clicked for him because he had the right presuppositions, and that no one should think it a value-free proof [72:12] [72:28]. | It does not set presuppositions aside; it looks at the causal principle itself [73:31] [73:43]. |
| Problems or questions raised |
| Is it rational to use inductive reasoning and the causal principle at all, and what would have to be true for it to be? [75:03] [77:20] |
| Bahnsen’s verdict | He says it is not going to be the objective proof of God’s existence [71:36] [71:42]. | He builds his proof on this question; the steps are summarized in the next section. |
The Anatomy of the Argument in This Lecture
This is a summary of how the lecture’s own reasoning runs from the question of induction to its conclusion. It is a summary, not Bahnsen’s wording.
- The goal is to show how rationality itself can be rational: how ultimate assumptions are justified [58:57] [59:35].
- The method is to ask for the preconditions of the intelligibility of experience [61:27].
- The test case is the causal principle, the basis of inductive reasoning, which generalizes across time and ahead in time (his examples are crows and a dropped apple) [73:47] [74:07] [74:30].
- We cannot live, reason or use language without it, and we assume it daily (his example is stubbing a toe) [75:25]. It presumes a continuity or uniformity in the world [76:05].
- The unbeliever relies on induction and says it is rational [76:51] [77:06].
- The question for him: how do you know it is rational, and what would have to be true for you to use it? [77:16] [77:20]
- Bahnsen reports that the best of the unbelieving world admits there is no justification for induction in the traditional, narrow sense [77:25] [77:36]. Quine says we use it because creatures that do so survived, and, as Bahnsen reports, Quine concedes that is a subtle begging of the question [77:48] [77:58].
- The claim: “Without the Christian worldview, rationality itself is unintelligible.” [78:11] Methods used against Christianity, he says, reduce to subjectivism and skepticism without the Christian worldview as their framework [78:11].
- The form of the argument: it is not deductive, empirical or pragmatic, though it can be rephrased to look like those; it is a distinct form of reasoning that asks what broader framework makes those activities possible [78:49] [78:57].
- The conclusion: the unbeliever’s own reasoning process proves God’s existence, because if God did not exist he could not make sense of reason [79:36].
What this lecture sketches rather than completes. Bahnsen introduces the proof by saying, “It goes something like this.” [78:11] and describes the seminar as the place where the case is made [25:36] [27:09]. In the transcript supplied, the following are not worked out:
- A positive account of how the Christian worldview grounds induction or the uniformity of nature. The lecture states that it does and describes the form of the argument, but the transcript ends without that account [78:49] [79:36].
- A comparison with other worldviews. The claim that only Christianity makes rational procedures intelligible [26:11] rests, in this lecture, on his survey of rationalist, empiricist and pragmatist approaches [53:11].
- The meaning of “faith” in the claim that all reasoning rests on faith, beyond its connection to a worldview [26:56].
Key People in the Lecture
This table says only what Bahnsen says about each person in this lecture. It is in alphabetical order.
| Person | Why Bahnsen brings him up |
|---|---|
| Cornelius Van Til | Bahnsen says he learned transcendental reasoning from Van Til’s writings, which he finds sometimes hard to understand but profound in their heart and soul [03:54] [04:37]. |
| John Dewey | Bahnsen’s pragmatist example. When Dewey could not answer philosophy’s problems, Bahnsen says, he declined to play the game [53:38]. Bahnsen says Dewey could not rationally justify his view of education or of how to reach it [55:03]. |
| René Descartes | Treated as a rationalist who claimed “I exist” is clear, distinct and self-evident, proved by the fact that doubting requires existing [29:44] [30:03]. He is called a dualist, with mental and physical reality [31:38]. |
| Kurt Gödel | Cited as one who showed that not everything, even in mathematics, can be proved, against rationalists in mathematics [47:07]. (The transcript reads “Goodell”; see the handoff note.) |
| Gordon Stein | Bahnsen refers to his debate with Stein and says Stein would hold that science is the model of rationality [49:24] [49:33]. The transcendentalist asks for an account of why science succeeds, and that requires metaphysics [50:11] [50:27]. |
| David Hume | Used to show the problem for empiricism: no observation of a continuing self, leaving sensations loose and disjoint [34:15] [35:05]. Bahnsen says Hume cheats when he calls himself a bundle of perceptions [37:52]. |
| Immanuel Kant | Bahnsen says Kant introduced transcendental reasoning in a very explicit way [03:54]. He mentions Kant’s unity of apperception [37:52] and Kant’s point that the cosmological argument yields at best a natural cause [70:17]. |
| Gottfried Leibniz | Held that there is an infinite plurality of substances called monads, contradicting Descartes and Spinoza [32:16]. |
| John Locke | Hume used Lockean approaches: judgments break down into simpler ones traced to sensation [35:05]. |
| Plato (as credited) | Bahnsen credits him, with some doubt, with the saying about a man convinced against his will [12:54]. |
| W. V. O. Quine | Bahnsen says Quine explains our use of induction by survival of the fittest [51:41] [51:52], and, citing The Web of Belief, that Quine admits this subtly begs the question [77:58]. |
| Bertrand Russell | Bahnsen reports Russell’s judgment that Descartes’ inference from thinking to existence begs the question [30:03]. |
| Arthur Schopenhauer | His reply to the “it has to stop somewhere” move: why should it not stop at the world? [71:12] |
| Baruch Spinoza | Began with the idea of substance as clear and distinct, concluding that only one thing exists, nature or God; Bahnsen calls him a monist [31:38]. |
| Ludwig Wittgenstein | Bahnsen says he would hold that past a point you cannot reason with someone using different linguistic principles [40:53]. |
Full Transcript
[00:00] Heavenly Father, we come to you today grateful that you are our Father and that we have the privilege to call upon you as your children. We acknowledge very freely that we have not that right by anything in ourselves, that we don’t come by this naturally, but it’s only by your supernatural grace and love that we belong to you. We confess our sin, and particularly this morning, Lord, we would confess the sins of our minds. We often do not reason in a way that shows your glory and is faithful to you.
[00:33] And we would ask, Lord, that you would help us as we are together to study over these next three days, to have our minds more fully conformed to your word, to be more faithful to you, to give greater glory to you. We ask that you do with us to help us understand when matters are difficult, help us to have clarity of vision and above all fidelity to your word. We thank you for the opportunity to be together as your people, and we pray you would bless us in our fellowship together, and our time would be sanctified to your service, for we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
[01:06] Our seminar is on transcendental arguments. The natural question is, why? Why talk about transcendental arguments? Now, in certain narrow areas of philosophical study, there is discussion of transcendental arguments going on, but I wouldn’t expect a broad cross-section of the Christian church as we have here today to be interested just because some philosophers are talking about something arcane like transcendental argument. So I’m going to take a few moments at the beginning of our seminar to try to explain to you why I think it’s so important that we as Christians take a look at this subject.
[01:43] It’s not just because there’s a narrow interest in philosophy. In fact, to be honest with you, I’m a little bit surprised if there’s any interest in it at all among philosophers, because my conviction is, to the degree that you get involved in transcendental reasoning, you’re going to be forced to worldview consideration. By worldview considerations, I mean a consideration of what our basic perspective on the nature of reality is, how we know what we know, how we should live our lives, that network of assumptions in terms of which we organize all of our experience, make sense out of our lives, guide our lives, and so forth. Those of you who have studied philosophy will know what I’m talking about immediately when I say modern philosophy is almost allergic to worldview considerations.
[02:28] It is really out of touch. It’s out of style. Many philosophers would consider it amateurish or gush in some sense to even think about the big questions of philosophy anymore. Philosophy has taken such an analytical turn in the 20th century, and that’s what I have specialized in. So I’m not against analytical philosophy. I think it’s valuable. But it’s turned so much toward analysis that you have philosophers who focus very narrowly, not even on a broad field like epistemology, but some subsection of epistemology, the theory of knowledge or metaphysics or ethics or metaethics, something of that nature, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, subsections of that, because the analytical approach is what? Break down bigger problems into smaller ones, right? Analyze, analyze, analyze. And so when you come along and you start talking about what is the broadest consideration in terms of which, what is the framework in terms of which all of that analysis makes sense? And you can take the work of one analyst over here and another analyst over here and bring them together and make some sense of them. When you start asking those broader questions, often philosophers, well, they kind of chuckle, they ridicule, they think it’s kind of old-fashioned, silly stuff. Sometime today, we’re going to go back and do a little bit on the history of philosophy so you can understand the significance of Immanuel Kant and what he did when he introduced in a popular, well, not popular, but I mean in a very explicit way, the notion of transcendental reasoning. Anyway, that’s old-fashioned. Going back to Kant, to the idealist, you know, we’re really past all that. So it’s really surprising that there’s any philosophical interest in analytical arguments at all. My interest in transcendental arguments didn’t come, therefore, because I was studying philosophy with an apologetical interest. It came because I studied theology first and happened to come across the writings of a theologian apologist by the name of Cornelius Van Til. And what Van Til was doing, though sometimes hard to understand, and I understand why people, you know, they smile and they say, wow, what’s this guy all about, really is profound. We can clean up a little bit of what he’s done to be sure. But I think that the heart and soul of what Van Til was doing very important. It’s from him that I learned transcendental reasoning. Now, why, as a Christian, do I care about transcendental reasoning in general? I thought I would explain that to you in terms of arguments for God’s existence. I’m convinced that the existence of God not only is objectively true, but it’s also objectively provable. Now, this is politically incorrect.
[05:18] you have to understand that this is not what apologists say today. The existence of God might be shown to be probable. It might be shown to be preferable. But very few apologists today are going to say that the existence of God is objectively provable. But I do believe that it is objectively provable. We even have in the broader evangelical world today, writers who are trying to, I guess, encourage people in the defense of the faith and their Christian walk who are suggesting that nothing is provable ultimately, that you can’t know anything for sure. I mean, how is it that anybody can know anything? And though Christians look at that and sometimes are very distressed or enthusiastic for it, they think, well, this is kind of a big deal in terms of our Christian ghetto. But they don’t realize that this is really just a pale reflection of what’s going on in epistemological studies in general. It’s part of the fallibilist, what we call the fallibilist tradition in epistemology. Everything is fallible. Nothing is infallible. Nothing can be known to be sure. Nothing has any guarantees in advance. And so as Christians start thinking this way, it’s time for us to, I think, be worried and do some correction and maybe get back to where we should be in our thinking as Christians. So I’m going to begin by suggesting that the existence of God is objectively provable, and now I have to talk about proof, don’t I? How am I going to objectively prove God’s existence? Before we talk about types of proof, a little bit should be said about the notion of proof itself. It’d be nice if we could just take these things for granted. We can’t, and so I’m going to bother you for a little while to talk about the nature of proof itself. The question of the truth of God’s existence has nothing to do with the psychology and or character of those who are arguing one way or another about God. The question of the truth of God’s existence is not related to the character of those who are arguing or the psychology of those who are arguing. In logic, if I could put it to you as we would in the logic class, we have to be very careful of what’s called the genetic fallacy and ad hominem arguments. We don’t want to say either in favor of God’s existence or against God’s existence, things which really have nothing to do with the merits of the case, but only have to do with the subjective origin of the opinion being discussed, or the man himself who’s doing the discussing. Many times, unbelievers will tell us that they can’t believe in the biblical God because of the kind of people Christians are. I’m sure you run into that. It’s always embarrassing, especially embarrassing if you’re the one who may be on the skewer for having defamed the faith. But it’s important to remember that an objective proof of the truth of something really has nothing to do with the man who is arguing. If I happen to have learned algebra from a child molester, I don’t have the right the rest of my life to say algebra is invalidate. After all, just look at what the algebra teacher was doing over here.
[08:38] In that case, everyone understands very well that you can’t engage in arguments about the man because algebra and the truth or falsity or validity or invalidity of it has nothing to do with the messenger himself. And that’s true with respect to us as Christians as well. We want to make clear to the unbelieving world that we are not defending ourselves or the character of our compatriots. We are defending the objective truth of God’s existence. And for you who are interested in apologetics, it’s good for you to remember that every argument that’s directed against Christians in one way or another, psychological in character, is a reversible argument, okay? Nothing is proven or disproven by those considerations, because they’re always reversible. And for every case of a Christian minister who gets caught in some kind of sexual scandal, we can easily match cases of people who openly profess a pagan outlook on life who do terrible, miserable things as well. So all those sorts of things are reversible.
[09:41] Remember, we’re dealing then with objective matters. The fact that they’re objective doesn’t take away from the fact that they are personal. The existence of God obviously is a very personal question. And it’s personal because it touches on us deeply. It touches our lives vitally. Indeed, the most important aspects of human experience are affected by what you think regarding God. Who are we? The enigmas of suffering and evil in this world or love and death. All these things are affected by whether you believe in God or you don’t believe in God. So the question of God’s existence is a very personal question, but the truth of God’s existence has nothing to do with our personal needs or interests. It isn’t to be thought that, well, the reason we’re here today learning how to defend the faith better and to argue about God’s existence is because we have a personal need that is met when we do this, and then there are other people who don’t have that kind of personal need, as though we were just talking about musical preferences. Some people like Bach, some people like Bon Jovi. So, and is that what it is? You know, we’re kind of like, we’re on the God wavelength in terms of our personal needs. Now we’re not here. Although I would say, I’m not embarrassed by this at all. When people say, you know, you have, you obviously have a very deep personal need for God. And that’s why you believe.
[11:09] Well, that’s probably true. And that’s why God made me to need him and to glorify him and to live for it. And so when people say those sorts of things, like that’s just so personal, you know, it’s just like meeting a need. Don’t think that that’s a put-down. Say, well, yeah, God made the world in such a way that we live best and are happiest when we know him and so forth. But nevertheless, the truth of his existence has nothing to do with my personal need. Okay, so you’re getting my point. We’re not talking about psychology. We’re talking about objective proof of an object of state of affairs, the truth that God exists. All right. Also, with respect to arguments and proof, you should note that an argument need not be accepted by everyone for it to be conclusive. An argument need not be accepted by everyone for it to be conclusive.
[12:01] I’m tempted to make reference to the O.J. Simpson trial. My guess is, as long as we’re on this planet, you’re not going to get everybody convinced one way or another. Now, should we just say, well, then why don’t we just give up courtroom protocol, calling witnesses, garnering evidence, arguing with one another? Because you can’t get everybody to agree one way or another, so it’s just really a crapshoot. So why don’t we get together, throw the dice, flip the coin, whatever, decide whether the guy’s guilty, him or anybody else, and then just get on with it.
[12:35] Our whole way of life, our culture, and I’m not, somebody might say, well, we can dump our culture, but for now, just you have to realize that in our culture, we know there’s a difference between proof and persuasion, don’t we? Not everybody will be persuaded, but we think proof is available. And as Christians, that’s a very important thing for us as well. When we say we can objectively prove God’s existence, we’re not saying we can universally persuade people. I’m told that it’s Plato, who said at first, I’m not really sure. We’ll give him the credit, though. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. That’s true. If I can prove something in that sense, be convincing. Yet a man doesn’t have a heart to go along with it. He’s not going to cry uncle. He’s not going to give up. We have to recognize that. And if you don’t, you’re really going to be strung out working on your Christian apologetic, I think, because over and over again, what you’re going to do is you’re going to use an argument and you see that somebody doesn’t just fall immediately and then say, oh, I’ve got to revise the argument. Well, that isn’t true.
[13:39] Sometimes you’ve got to repeat the argument. Sometimes you just have to keep coming back and back and back until the coin drops for the person. But even when you have the greatest of arguments, really solid, cogent stuff, if the man’s heart has not changed, he’s not going to have a point about. He’s not going to say he understands or that’s all right. So when I say I believe the existence of God is objectively provable, first of all, remember, I’m talking about an objective matter, not just personal desires, ad hominem, or genetic considerations and all that. And secondly, remember that I’m talking about proof, not persuasion. Go right ahead. Remember I told you though, you may not raise your hand. Yes. The Latin expression ad hominem means to or against the man. So you make an appeal to the man or against the man in some cases when you don’t look at the merits of the case, but you consider something about his personal life or needs or the background of the person who is arguing, that sort of thing. So it’s a more personal and psychological or genetic consideration rather than one that’s relevant to what you’re arguing.
[14:55] If somebody has an argument about what causes cancer, and then you stand up after he’s presented his scientific paper and all his evidence and say, you know, I don’t like your tie. How could you possibly dress that way in public? Most people are going to say, you know, that really has nothing to do with cancer. You know, you’re talking about the man. You’re saying your mother didn’t teach you how to dress, but that doesn’t take anything away from your argument. I mean, that’s an outrageous example, but it’ll tell you what an ad hominem argument is.
[15:25] Right. It skirts the merits of a case and looks at the circumstances of how it’s being argued or who’s arguing it. No, I don’t think fallibilists have to say that all arguments are ad hominem. They do want to say all arguments are less than conclusive. And so they might grant, I’m sure they would grant, that many arguments are relevant. They’re on point, but nothing can ever establish a conclusion, you know, infallibly, indubitably. Yeah, in a sense, you put it all together, it’s going to be your word against mine and therefore your character against my character, isn’t it?
[16:05] When I talk about proof being different from persuasion, I talk about the person arguing being distinguished from what he is arguing. This is a cousin to the distinction I want to introduce thirdly now between metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysics deals with what exists, what is real, the nature of reality, relationships between those things that exist, and so forth. Epistemology deals with how we know what we know, what are the nature and limits of human knowledge. And there’s a difference between metaphysics and epistemology in the sense that something can exist, something can be real without us knowing it, correct? For many, many years, DNA existed without us knowing it, right? So there’s a difference between something existing and something being known to exist. There’s also a difference between something existing and a person being able to prove it unless you are a very radical subjective idealist you believe that it’s possible that something exists that no one has proven not just that they don’t know it or aware of it but they’re not able to prove it the planet uranus existed and was suspected to exist before there was proof of it okay so existence is different from knowledge of, existence is different than proof of, and something can exist even though a person offers reasons against it. That’s obvious, isn’t it? Sometimes people, it’s not just we don’t have reasons enough, but sometimes we have reasons that we think would show that it doesn’t exist.
[17:44] The offering of reasons and even apparently cogent reasons does not show that something cannot or does not exist. I think I could give you pretty good arguments today against the idea that I have diabetes. My doctor thought it was interesting that I felt that I had good arguments against my having diabetes when he was giving me the lab reports to show that I do have diabetes. And at least sometimes during the days that I live, I’m rational. People think that I’m an intelligent person. So here I’m arguing doctor to doctor about this matter. And do you think that had anything to do with whether I have diabetes? Of course not. Okay. Now, why am I telling you all, well, you probably can see the analogy that’s coming, right? When I say that the existence of God is objectively true and objectively provable, I’m not at all suggesting that I can persuade everybody. I’m not talking about psychological considerations. And I realize that there are people who think they can offer arguments against God’s existence. And we can’t get into all those in the short three-day seminar, but I would like to show you how you can prove the existence of God. That’s a metaphysical truth. And you can epistemologically, in an objective, provable fashion, demonstrate this conclusion, even though not everyone’s convinced and people may argue against it. This leads me to another introductory consideration now about the relationship of faith and reason. If we can get worked out this notion of an objective proof of God’s existence along the lines of transcendental reasoning, which is the subject of our seminar, I think that it will really open things up, will enlighten your minds with regard to the relationship of faith and reason. This old conundrum, this chestnut that has been there in the history of the church, I think all of a sudden gets resolved and very easily, in fact, so easily, you look at it and say, how could we have missed it? It’s really quite obvious.
[19:49] I think it is mistaken, and indeed it’s misleading, to think that Christian faith takes over where reason leads off. Many people have the idea that we can reason about things such as, oh, science, medicine, industry, economics, history, whatever it may be. And reasoning will take you really, really far. But at some point, reasoning stops, and then faith begins. So that for us as Christians, we agree with everybody else in the world when it comes to natural matters, matters of this life, temporal existence, nature. We agree with everybody else and their reasoning about those things. But then what we do is we add another story to the house of knowledge or at least personal living. And that’s the story of faith, right? So everybody around here thinks in a natural way and uses reason. And then we add faith to that. And I think that’s misleading. I think it is mistaken. Faith is not without reason. Faith is not above reason. Faith is not contrary to reason. And the outlook that I’ll be trying to teach you in our seminar. To put it very simply, I do not in any sense endorse what is called fideism. If that’s a new term for you, F-I-D-E-I-S-M, literally faithism. Fideism says that Christian faith is independent of considerations of reason or reasoning. Christian faith is a personal commitment. Christian faith is a voluntary or voluntaristic leap, but it has nothing to do with reasoning, with argumentation. I don’t believe that for a moment. I believe Christian faith is not only reasonable, there are plenty of people who say that, we can’t show that it violates anything that a reasonable man would say, but I maintain that Christian faith is demanded by reason. Reason can be affirmed without endorsing what’s known as rationalism. Rationalism, however, is a term that’s subject to so many different definitions. It’s a specific school of epistemology, but it also is a broad attitude toward how we live our lives and conduct ourselves intellectually. Rationalism in the broad sense says that man’s mind is the highest authority, or at least man’s mind is autonomous. It never bows to any outside authority. The autonomous man might grant that there’s a God. The man who says, I’m intellectually self-sufficient, I’m the final authority. Such a person might grant that there’s a God. Usually he doesn’t, to be sure. But you need to recognize to understand the character of autonomy. He could grant that there’s a God, but it could never be the Christian God, right? Why is that? Because the Christian God doesn’t bow to the authority of the servant. The servant is to bow to the authority of the Lord. Now, there are people who want to promote autonomous reasoning to get people to believe in the Christian God. And I think that is just so fundamentally wrongheaded to try to say to somebody, you need to have faith in this God, and I’m going to prove to you to your own satisfaction with you being the ultimate authority that God is the ultimate authority. I’ll say that again. I’m going to prove to you that your ultimate authority and your reasoning that God is the authority. So you can’t do that. Rationalism in that sense affirms that man’s mind is the highest authority and that it operates independently of God and self-sufficiently. And I’ve been in university training in the past and I continue to pay attention to higher education and to our culture as well. And it just boggles my mind that anybody could believe in the autonomy of man’s mind, the self-sufficiency and independence of man’s mind. If that were true, why is there such massive disagreement in the university still? What’s wrong with man’s mind? How does man’s self-sufficient mind not get things worked out? And it’s not just that the psychologists differ with the political scientists. Political scientists can’t agree among themselves, and the psychologists can’t agree among themselves. They say, yeah, well, we get over into other things that are not quite such soft issues like math or physics, then they all agree.
[24:18] Well, no, they don’t. A huge disagreement in schools, philosophies of math, huge disagreements among physicists and so forth. So the self-sufficiency of man’s mind, just on the face of it, is a silly doctrine. But that isn’t to say it isn’t the reigning dogma and prejudice of people. Nevertheless, rationalism is the idea that man’s mind is self-sufficient. It’s the highest authority. That’s different from rationality. Rationality refers to man’s intellectual capability. And with all my heart and soul, I affirm rationality. And I affirm it because God made us. He made us to think. He expects us to think. Indeed, since we’re made in the image of God, and he is supremely rational and coherent, he is the truth itself, as Jesus said, then we ought to be concerned about the truth and about reasoning and using our minds to glorify God. Paul put it this way, we are to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We’re supposed to be using our minds and using them in a subservient way as a tool to glorify God. Some people use their minds as a tool to argue against God. We use our minds is a tool to argue for God, but we certainly affirm rationality. We’re not fideists. We affirm reason. We do not affirm rationalism. In fact, this seminar, when you get to the end, if you look back over it, I hope you’ll see, in a sense, the whole seminar is an attempt to show that the Christian use of rationality refutes rationalism, that if we’re going to use our minds in the best way, you can’t be a rationalist. And against autonomy, I’m going to be arguing in our seminar that all reasoning rests upon faith. My first consideration was faith doesn’t go beyond reason.
[26:11] Now I’m going to turn the tables and say to the unbelieving rationalist’s argument, as a matter of fact, your rationality rests upon faith. You can’t justify reasoning without a worldview, broader considerations than analytic philosophers like to think about today, but you can’t justify rationality without a broader consideration of the worldview that you have, and the only worldview that will allow for rationality or make intelligible the use of rational procedures is Christianity. And so this is pretty heavy stuff, as you can see. We’re arguing that if anybody reasons at all, ultimately, they are borrowing from or actually working in terms of the Christian outlook on life, that faith is foundational to all rationality, to all reasoning. Okay, are we whetting your appetite? Are we getting some idea of where we’re going now?
[27:09] how are we going to prove this? How are we going to prove that rationality itself is only intelligible or rational within the Christian worldview? Well, I began by saying I think Christianity is object of the existence of God, is objectively true and objectively provable. So now we get around to talking about proof. How do we prove things? In particular, how do I prove in this objective, massive way that I’ve laid out that the existence of God is necessary for anybody’s reasoning. I’m going to give you, there’s different ways of cutting the cake, and I’ve kind of debated all the way up to the beginning of our seminar exactly how I wanted to do this, but I’m going to begin by suggesting there are four general kinds of proof or reasoning, and then I’m going to go back and do a little more detail and kind of deepen that initial summary or overview. Be sure you don’t want interrupt me. I told you, I mean, I’ll do this. It’ll sound like a lecture if you don’t do that.
[28:15] Every once in a while, just for my sake, make up a question. Say it again. Rationality is the use of man’s intellectual ability. And I liken that to a tool. The tool is a form of capability. It makes, I now become able to solve this log or something because I have this tool and the mind of man is a tool and we affirm it as a tool. It’s the intellectual ability of man we affirm over against it.
[28:50] Okay, what kind of proof is argued by people? What kind of proof is offered by people to argue for conclusions? To be very simplistic, I’ll divide proofs up into four kinds. First of all, rationalist-type proofs, empiricist-type proofs, pragmatist-type proofs, and then transcendental proofs. In the history of philosophy, we’re going to come back to this, so I’ll give you greater detail to end, but in the history of philosophy, some philosophers have argued that we prove things by showing that they can be deduced from more basic truths, and ultimately the basic truths which are the foundation for what we are proving are known in a rational way.
[29:44] because we have a concept or an idea that is clear to us and distinct and self-evident, that it’s the sort of thing you just can’t deny. It’s present before your mind in such a way, as Descartes said, that there’s no way that you can not affirm it. It’s self-evident. It carries its own evidence within itself. Here’s a self-evident truth. I exist. How could I think otherwise, right? Isn’t that clear and distinct to me? In fact, Descartes thought he had an interesting way of proving that. It had to be as he thinks. He said, because if I doubt that I exist, I have to exist in order to do the doubting, right? Bertrand Russell was of sterner material, philosophically speaking, than Descartes. As Russell said about Descartes’ argument, which everybody should see it begs the question he said the argument should be thinking is going on therefore I exist of course once you put it that way the argument’s a horrible argument there’s nothing about thinking in general that shows that you specifically and personally exist and so Descartes had something which he thought was clear and distinct self-evident that it turns out that disagreement’s possible about that. Well, disagreement is really, it’s more evident that disagreement’s possible when you think about Descartes’ colleagues in what’s known as the School of Continental Rationalism. Not colleagues because they work together, but there were other philosophers at that time who felt that you could give a foundation in clear and distinct self-evident truths or notions from which we can deduce substantial conclusions about reality.
[31:38] Another one, another philosopher who believed that was Spinoza. And so Spinoza began with his notion of substance, which he thought was a clear and distinct idea. And from it, he concluded that there’s only one thing that exists. It’s the whole of nature, or you can call it God. He said, it really doesn’t make any difference. And so he was a monist. He believed there’s only one reality. Descartes felt there had to be two types of reality. Mental, which is not extended in space, and body reality, matter, which is extended in space. So he is a dualist. So here you have one man claiming self-evident truths as a foundation for a metaphysic of dualism. Another man claiming self-evident truths as the foundation for his metaphysic of monads. Then Leibniz came along and really spiced everything up by saying, you’re both wrong. There’s an infinite plurality of substances that he called monads that are running around in this world. And you don’t want to get into all the details of that, at least not yet. But the point is, that makes rationalist arguments very suspect. It would appear that rationalist-type arguments reduce the subjectivism or at least disagreement that’s unreliable. I mean, the foundations are unreliable because people disagree with them and do different things with them. Much more popular and easier for American and English students to understand are empiricist-type arguments, because that’s the culture in which we’ve been raised. Well, we like this idea that seeing is believing.
[33:15] Empiricist-type argument appeals to foundations again, but these foundations are perceptual, or at least commonsensical in nature. So, to know anything is to be able to trace what you’re claiming to know and every aspect of it back to some kind of observational certainty. The empiricist tradition in the history of philosophy is always foundered, however, over, well, broadly considerations in cognitive psychology. That is, looking at the economy of thinking. How do we think? What is the psychological process by which we cogitate? And if the truths that we believe need to be verified by being traced back through our cognitive psychology to perceptual foundations, then we’re going to have to have a credible explanation of that psychological process, and it’s never really been offered.
[34:15] In fact, in the case of David Hume, the cognitive psychology was completely blown out of the water because David Hume said, if everything is loose and disjoint, then I don’t ever find myself when I look at the world. As my observations never include an observation of me as a continuing thinking person or substance. You’re sure you feel free to break in now at any point And I’m surprised no one has said, what are you talking about? I’m waiting for you to say, what is the brain? Okay, okay. So I’ll assume that somebody has interrupted and said, how could David Hume say something like that?
[34:55] Well, you know, really, for all of the arcaneness of his point of view, David Hume’s not hard to follow. I kind of like the guy. Okay. Locke says every judgment that we make breaks down into certain kinds of other judgments, complex judgments into simple ones, and these simple ones can be traced to sensation and so forth. So Hume, using the Lockean approaches, well then, where do I ever see myself as the one who is receiving these sensations? It’s not just that there are sensations that are coming to me, but there’s got to be a receiver of these sensations, right? Well now, what if there is no continuing receptor? What if there’s just reception, reception, reception, reception, and they have no connection with one another? That’s possible philosophically. If somebody says, well, but that isn’t what happens. As a matter of fact, there is one continuing self-conscious receiver who says, fine, show that to me in my observation. Where do I observe the self-conscious continuation of my personal identity. We don’t. And so empiricist-type arguments in our day and age, empiricism has really kind of shaded off into a kind of common sense perceptual approach, where instead of going and looking at the psychology, the cognitive psychology of knowing, we just begin with, look, there are certain things that everybody knows. Everyone holds the hand in front of their face and says I know that I have a hand with five fingers okay and then if you deny that kind of thing it’s like I mean how could you be rational I mean how could you even talk to a person how could you formulate rules of rationality for a person who deny something that obvious I don’t think that’s really a very good argument that that’s been popular in the 20th century. We do perceive certain things, and people aren’t being rational if they deny that. No, Hume didn’t do that. Many people try to get around Hume’s difficulties with cognitive psychology by saying Hume’s problem is he thought every sensation was separate from every other sensation. So that rather than my perceiving you, I’ll just say as a human body or humanoid right now rather than taking you as a whole object what i’m perceiving is the color of your shirt the shape of your body you know the numerical quality of how many eyes ears and all these different things are coming in here and Hume says i don’t know that there’s anybody here who can receive that and make sense out of so you’re loose and disjoint i’m loose and disjoint. You can see that picture of knowing destroys the possibility of knowing anything.
[37:52] So now the comeback is to say the unity of apperception, as Kant put it, has not been dealt with well by modern philosophy at all. That is, how is it that I’m more than a bundle of perceptions? That’s what David Hume said. You realize, of course, that on Hume’s approach, he was cheating when he said he was a bundle of perceptions. His argument was, I’m nothing more but a bundle of perceptions, and that was enough to destroy, you know, science and the possibility of knowing. But of course, he’s not a bundle of perceptions, is he? To call himself a bundle already assumes some kind of unity of perception. But on the other end, the common sense philosophers would say, we don’t perceive individual things like color, shape, number, those sorts of things, and then somehow mix it up and get it right in our head. They would say, what we are perceiving are wholes, okay? So I perceive you as a person. I perceive this as a dog, that as a refrigerator, whatever it may be. And then that leads not into cognitive psychological difficulties or problems, but a discussion of how it is we categorize things. Why do we think in the categories we do? What relationship does that have to language and learning and all that?
[39:06] where one culture might say the rabbit is running because of the category scheme that is used. Another culture has one word, maybe one concept, as far as we can tell, for running rabbit, and another concept completely different for sitting rabbit. So we break it up as rabbit and then forms of motion, running, sitting, whatever, whereas another culture might have a different conceptual scheme. We can’t get into all that, but that shades off then into cultural relativism in terms of our cognitive scheme. Go ahead. Doesn’t this fall apart in an empirical approach?
[39:43] Well, what you’re bringing up, Scott, is a second problem with empiricism. If you look at the empiricist notion of concept formation or the empiricist view of the meaningfulness of language, essentially saying that all of our concepts, if they are true, must be traced to empirical experiences, observations. And any language we use, if it’s going to be meaningful, it’s got to also make reference to those things which are known by observation or to those things which are just logical constants by which we combine words and so forth. That falls apart because the very empiricist theory of concept formation or of meaningfulness of language itself cannot be traced back to observations or to observation language. And so you’re right, empiricism refutes itself. The argument I’ve been using up to this point is it’s just not workable.
[40:38] And as Hume showed, if you’re going to go, you’re going to trace everything you know back through various stages of combinations of judgments and sensations and so forth to a perceptual foundation, you’re not going to get anything once you get back to your foundation. it’s crumbled. And what you’re adding is that there’s also the logical problem that it can’t live up to its own norms. It says this is what is required to know something or for it to be meaningful, and that it can’t live up to that requirement itself. Common sense perceptualism says that we all have perceptions. There’s no question about it. Wittgenstein would say after a certain point, you can’t reason with the person who doesn’t use the same kind of language you do If you say, you know, you see a hand in front of you and this person has doubts about that, he’s just, he’s using a completely different set of linguistic principles.
[41:36] He has a different category scheme to something. And they can find openly admitted you can’t argue with certain people. At that point, you get to rock bottom, you call each other heretic and go home. And so what does that reduce to? Well, fallibilism, right? Skepticism. No one can know anything. everything is certain only within a certain conventional way of looking at things or talking about things.
[42:01] See, now this is good. If all of you are in this wavelength, what happened to rationalism? Skepticism. Subjectivism and therefore skepticism. What happened to empiricism? It reduces to subjectivism and therefore skepticism. Now, go ahead. There’s a pattern. Yeah, there is a pattern, yes. You’re saying that even though the father doing that, that’s a subjective root. Of course. Ultimately, it is. I mean, you don’t have to have advanced training in philosophy to see how this works out. Just think about it. When someone appeals to common sense, that appeal is only going to be good if it’s common sense. But how do you know that it’s common?
[42:44] The sad thing is, very few things are common in that way. But whether you know of people who disagree or not, you have to still philosophically deal with, what if somebody didn’t think about, didn’t take as obvious truth what you think is obvious? What would you do with it? How would you do with that? Well, you have conventionalist and relativist and skeptical ways of dealing with that, I think.
[43:07] ultimate well this in one way is one version of what our presuppositions are our presuppositions are these common sense notions yeah and i think you can see where we’re going is the transcendentalist you see pushes so hard that he says those can’t be your presuppositions or if they are boy you’re in bad shape you’re reduced to subjectivism and skepticism well the pragmatist approach to prove your views already, but it seems to me from the Christian worldview you have a base of the economy. So when you say it reduces the irrationality, we’re talking on those worldviews or on those considerations.
[43:58] The autonomous attempt to find irrefutable common sense notions reduces to subjectivism, and therefore to skepticism. And I would say, Mike, that you’re right that from the Christian standpoint, there are common sense notions. But from a Christian standpoint, you also have to add that because men are not just rational beings, but sinners, they don’t admit to what is commonsensical. What’s the most commonsensical thing to believe? That God exists, right? Not just a God, the God who’s the creator of heaven and earth, who is triune, who is sovereign, who is personal, omniscient.
[44:39] You know, the biblical picture of God. That is common sense. I believe from Romans 1 that everybody believes that. Not everybody admits it, but they suppress it in unrighteousness. Yes. Well, let me try to answer your question in two ways. I think most people, garden variety individuals living in our culture, not the special breed of people called philosophers. Most people, first of all, don’t self-consciously think about what their proof theory is. Okay, so let’s just be mindful of that. we’re overdoing it if we think everybody is going through this and making a choice of a theory.
[45:20] Most people don’t even think about it as a theory. But in their practice, I think you’re absolutely right. Most people, this kind of the transcendental one, they don’t get into. But they tend to just freely go back and forth among you. Sometimes logic is what convinces. Sometimes it’s seeing is believing. Other times it is, I don’t care how you intellectually work it out. It works. You know, this is what here’s polio. So that’s good enough for me. Yeah, most people like that.
[45:47] Now, the second answer I give you is that when you talk about the philosophers, the interesting thing is you do have schools of philosophy that try to be exclusively one or the other. In fact, the most vicious approach to philosophy, or at least the most aggressive and cutting, hard-edged approach, is the approach that says ultimately everything is going to be reduced to a natural experience. The popular thing in at least my generation’s epistemology is the notion of what’s called naturalizing epistemology, where theory of knowledge is no longer ultimately a philosophical subject.
[46:26] subject. Philosophers talk about it, but what they talk about is how our knowing reduces to another branch of nature, you know, psychology or whatever it may be, sociology. And later on in my notes, I’m going to be talking about this. We’ll come back to it. So there are some who try to push that real hard. Those who are rationalists are not anywhere close to being mainstream and popular today. Those who would be called rationalists today would not say that everything reduces to these clear and distinct ideas or self-evident truths, but that there are some things that do. So you have rationalists in mathematics, for instance, who say, well, at least in this area, everything is provable, deductively certain, and it reduces to these self-evident truths. But then there are people in the field of mathematics that make fun of that too. You know, not everything is provable. You know, you have Gödel and others who’ve shown it’s impossible to prove everything, even in math. So to answer your question, yeah, your garden variety individual is going to go back and forth among these things.
[47:35] Philosophers haven’t always done that, however. But then there are philosophers who do say the best thing is to try to bring all these things together. They like to see a perspective here a perspective there that are beneficial. They usually are categorized as pragmatists, which is what I’m going to go on and talk about, though. Mike, you getting ready to say something? No, Stein, he would say that he’s a rationalist and an empiricist. He’s one of these people who would, he doesn’t have a very sophisticated epistemology, that’s obvious, but to the degree he’s thought about it, he thinks you need logic and you need experience. And I think when people start studying philosophy, I’m looking at you who have studied philosophy, isn’t that pretty natural for people to do? You see these arguments and you say, well, yeah, I mean, there’s a place for logic and there’s a place for experience. Why don’t we just bring them together?
[48:27] You know, and wouldn’t we all be happy? Well, except that philosophically, they don’t go together. They go together in our living though, don’t they? And that’s why students, naive students can think, well, I can just have logic and empiricism and so forth. Well, but you see, if you have an empiricism, then you have to ask, what’s your observational foundation for logic? You say, oh, no, no, logic’s not in that part. You say, okay, well, then what is the unity of your theory of knowledge? How can you use logic with respect to empirical things? You can’t say, I divide my field of knowledge, so I don’t have to have observational foundations for logic, and then turn around and say, but I get to apply logic to what I observe.
[49:15] No, what I’m saying is they’re not being rational. They’re being arbitrary. They would call it that. Yeah, and let me tell you why. I hope you all have some familiarity with my debate with Gordon Stein or at least his literature so that this will make sense to more than just two of us here. Basically, Stein would, I mean, if he knew what to say, I don’t think he understands the jargon at all, but if he knew what to say, he’d say that science is the model of rationality. Here’s what scientists do.
[49:43] That’s what rational people should do. That’s what I’m doing. You’re not. So I win. I’m rational. You’re irrational. I mean, I’ve compressed real quick. He is assuming this is what most people do. You look for a successful intellectual venture. We call that science. That’s what’s taught at the university. That’s what’s curing diseases and putting bridges together and so forth. And you say that then becomes the model of rationality. And then the transcendentalist comes along and says, okay, but we need to have some account for the success of science. You can’t just say, do it this way because it’s successful.
[50:22] If you’re going to be philosophically sophisticated, you have to explain how it is that it’s successful. And there’s only one way to explain, I mean, one general way in which you can answer that question, and that’s to do metaphysics.
[50:33] you have to have some account of the nature of reality in terms of which that’s why when we do the following kinds of things procedurally methodologically we have success so i’m already talking about pragmatism but let me go back and just real quickly explain the pragmatist sees the problems of the rationalist and the empiricist in terms of theory of knowledge and essentially says i’m going to avoid those pitfalls by telling everybody they’re irrelevant This is a bold move. They don’t always come out and put it this bluntly. I mean, there’s more sophisticated ways of saying it.
[51:09] But essentially, the practice says, who cares about Hume skepticism? We don’t need to answer Hume because, after all, we’re able to build bridges and cure polio and do things. As long as a certain procedure helps us to adapt to our environment successfully. then it’s rational. A certain procedure helps us to accomplish our ends, and that’s why we choose it. We are pragmatic in our approach. Quine openly says that we prefer a certain approach because of survival of the fittest. I mean, I can’t believe it. He’s got it right out and said it.
[51:52] The reason why we think inductively is because those who think inductively survive. It’s just built into us. we don’t worry about justifying induction it’s just a pragmatic matter now the problem with pragmatism is that it’s it presumes we know what ends to see we know where we want to go and there’s an obligation to go there but if you don’t have a justification for the normativity of the end that is pursued by what you call rationality then is rationality justified I’m going to go slow here because I’m sure that this is what’s going to confuse some of you.
[52:35] You should be stopping me. How do you justify rational procedure? How do you justify rationality? How do you make rationality itself rational? The pragmatist says because it accomplishes our ends. But you see, that doesn’t justify rationality unless you can what? Justify your ends. This is what the pragmatist is unable to do. So pragmatism reduces to subjectivism. Hey, see, some of you are catching on, right? And so what seems to be the persistent problem in autonomous philosophy? It keeps getting reduced to subjectivism and skepticism. Pragmatism not only reduces in the way that the others do to skepticism, but I just want to add my own little two cents worth of a kick in the pants.
[53:25] It also is, I think, the chicken approach to philosophy. I can be insulting here. It’s just a refusal to face the tough questions. I know John Dewey looks at the history of philosophy and all these things. Dewey couldn’t answer the problems. And so you know what he does? He says, well, then I won’t play that game. And this is a rough analogy, but that’d be kind of like going out to the basketball court and realizing that maybe you don’t have the ability to compete with Dr. Bahnsen’s sons out there on the court.
[53:55] And then you say, after you’ve shown up for the game, who cares about basketball? Right? Now, I just want you to be able to see in a mundane level, intellectually, well, in intellectual circles, scholars, they always guard their pride, you know, and so you’re not going to see them not do that. But essentially, John Dewey said, we’re not able to do this. Who cares? We are able to do other things. and these other things we’re able to do we’ll call the model of science that’s what it is to be rational oh yes pragmatism is essentially political in nature yeah the pragmatist would say especially early on Dewey would say the power is publicly observable okay but as you know Dewey has a particular view of society and education and so forth, he thought his approach to education was scientific and therefore would benefit society. But he also said that what you do in the classroom is for the good of society.
[55:03] So he has two things going on here, his own view of education and then his own view of how we accomplish that. But in neither case, was he able to rationally justify that. It does reduce the subjectivism. Actually, all fields are reducing to relativism in our day and therefore, I’m jumping back and forth between two sets of notes that I’ve prepared for you, but in a little while I’m going to explain to you. When skepticism wins out, you always end up with either anarchism or dogmatism, okay? Anarchism, the relativistic notion that everybody can say what’s right in his own eyes. Truth is person relative, that sort of thing. So it’s all anarchistic. There’s no objectivity. Where do we see anarchism in academic studies with a vengeance today?
[55:51] What’s that? Well, in ethics. I mean, that battle was lost long ago to the liberals, but we’re beyond liberalism. We’re beyond liberal ethics now. How about those people who say you don’t even have objective meaning for literature? Deconstructionism. Ultimate anarchism in terms of, you know, a theory of knowledge. And then the other way you go is dogmatism. Now, most people think of dogmatism because of historic associations with religious dogmatism. But that’s not the only kind of dogmatism, right? Communist epistemology is dogmatic. You know, it’s like you lose the argument because you’re violating what is presumed to be the course of the dialectic working itself out in history. And therefore, if you speak contrary to the party line, you’re really speaking contrary to humanity, speaking contrary to reality, and that’s why we should execute you. Now, there are a lot of little steps in between, but those are the big steps. If anybody has any doubt about that, there’s tons of literature on what academic pursuits are like under communist regimes. Well, so it’s not just religious, but dogmatism doesn’t even have to be like the inquisition or communism. In our culture, dogmatism takes the form of what we popularly call political correctness, right? You want to get a promotion at the university? If you even want a part-time appointment, you better make sure that you fit in with the reigning paradigm. So if the university were committed to objective rationality, which is what I’m holding out for, then it wouldn’t have to resort to dogmatism or just go like a wet noodle in the face of anarchism.
[57:39] But that’s what we see happening, I think. These big swings from a dogmatic approach to the anarchistic approach to what we’re able to know in the university today. The old model of the enlightenment, of the objective, rational approach to things is not a bad model. It’s just impossible on autonomous presuppositions to do that. So in a sense, we’re saying we’re going to go back can kind of rescue the history of philosophy, the history of the university, and so forth. I know this sounds grandiose, but I want you to see what’s at stake here.
[58:11] The other approach to proof in this very simplistic overview is what I’ll call transcendental reasoning. Up to this point, it would be possible for you to have gotten the mistaken idea that when I talk about an empirical approach, I’m talking about particular empirical projects or things that have been learned empirically. So that some people would say, well, I would justify that particular conclusion by this empirical means. Therefore, when I come along now and suggest transcendentalism as an approach, that what I’m saying is I can justify that particular conclusion now by transcendental means. But that’s not what we’re talking about.
[58:57] We’re talking about how do you prove your ultimate assumptions? What is the nature of argumentation? What is the nature of proof? So that the empiricist says when all is said and done, proof is going to be tied to observation, to put it very simply. That means even at the lowest level, My foundational assumptions have to be observational. The transcendentalist is not talking about how we learn how to fix a carburetor, you know, who won the battles of 1776. The transcendentalist is talking about how do we show the rationality of our ultimate presuppositions.
[59:42] So I’m drawing a distinction between how you justify your basic assumptions, how do you show rationality itself to be rational, and what might be considered the higher level considerations that we engage in intellectually to learn how to fix carburetors, learn about history, etc., etc. I say that because sometimes people who don’t like the transcendental approach will say, well, how does the transcendentalist give a specific answer to this over here? And so it’s not calculated to give you a specific answer to anything. It’s calculated to show you how it’s possible to be rational. So if I’m a transcendentalist in my reasoning, do I reject empirical methods? Do I reject rational methods? Do I reject pragmatic considerations? No, not necessarily. I mean, some might, some might not, but you’re not understanding the question properly, if you think they all stand, you know, over against one another, you can only have one of these, you know, it’s kind of like, if you take the chocolate ice cream, you can’t have the vanilla.
[60:53] But the transcendentalist says, if we understand how to justify our ultimate assumptions, we have laid a foundation in terms of which we can now use not empiricism, but empirical methods. Now we can use rational methods. We can even use pragmatic methods. But it won’t do you any good to be empirical, rational, or pragmatic if in the end the skeptic wins. And he says, well, how do you know ultimately then? And it’s only the transcendentalists that I think can give an answer.
[61:27] Transcendental reasoning seeks the preconditions for the intelligibility of experience. I’m going to say that again so you can get it in your notes. Transcendental reasoning seeks the preconditions of the intelligibility of experience. And when I say experience, I mean that in the broadest sense. Experience can be an internal thing. I’m not talking about experiencing the gardener coming on the wrong day here. I can have an experience internally that has no connection to the outside world. I can have a dream, right? Now, some people might say you have to first have other experiences than you have dreams.
[62:10] But the point is, I can imagine things. I can imagine right now that I’m on the beach in Hawaii. I did that. Okay? I wasn’t looking at the beach in Hawaii. So experience is internal. It can be an experience of something. So it can have an external reference, or at least what’s thought to be an external reference. Experience can be conceptual. It can be, how do I want to put this? What’s the word? Our thinking sometimes is in terms of images. Like when I stopped to think about being on the beach in Hawaii, I had an image in my mind.
[62:42] I was actually flashing back to an experience. But not all of our thinking is in terms of images. Sometimes it’s computational, conceptual, relational, so forth. So any kind of experience about which we can speak, how is it intelligible? How can it be that we can talk about it, that we can communicate about it, we can reason about it? How is it possible there’s objective truth, in terms of which some of these things are just imaginary, other things are not? When we get into these discussions about the rationality of our experience, what would have to be true?
[63:25] What would be the precondition in terms of which my experience is intelligible? talkaboutable, arguable. And the transcendental types of arguments that we look at are an attempt to provide that precondition of intelligibility, and in this sense, defeat radical doubt, defeat skepticism. It’s not an attempt to tell you what theory of childhood cognition is correct, or what theory for curing AIDS is correct, or who actually was the person that led the troops in 1776. It’s not an attempt to settle any specific issue. It’s an attempt to show that issues are settleable.
[64:11] Pardon the English there. How is it possible to play the game of rationality, regardless of what the outcome is? So the transcendental type of proof is an attempt to defeat skepticism, not by appealing to self-evident truths like the rationalist, or to perceptual certainties like the empiricist, or to the success that is attainable, as the pragmatist talks about, but rather it’s an attempt to show what would have to be true, what are the preconditions for the intelligibility of all of our rational procedures.
[64:53] Well, actually, you’re bringing a little bit different dimension here, but I thank you forward that, let me say two things about settlability. Some arguments for the existence of God or the Christian worldview do not settle the issue. They say, we’re using common rational procedures that the unbeliever understands, and we can show very likely that the Christian worldview is the one you should choose. But they can’t settle it. It can’t be conclusive. But what I was talking about, it’s related to this issue. What I was talking about, though, is, is it possible to have any settled conviction in the face of skepticism?
[65:35] And the transcendental approach to reasoning answers the skeptic in a way that the foundationalist, you know, be they common sense, perceptual, rational, what have you, and the pragmatist, on the other hand, cannot. So in terms of general formal considerations, Bill, transcendental reasoning is an attempt to answer skepticism that’s different from the foundationalist and different from the pragmatist. So the transcendentalist is saying things can be settled. Now, when you translate this into the Christian context, we’re arguing for the Christian worldview, we’re also saying, and we can settle the issue of God’s existence. Now, early on, I’ve got to probably move a little bit faster, but early on I said, I believe the existence of God is provable. Now let me go back and looking at these approaches show you by contrast what I’m getting at when I endorse a transcendental approach. I’m only going to use one. I had thought about the others as well, but let’s just take what is called the cosmological argument for God’s existence. This is standard fair in apologetics. Cosmological argument tries to show that from a certain concept or principle that we have about the way the world is, God must exist.
[66:55] And the specific concept that is used, the principle that is used in the cosmological argument is that of causation. Every event has a cause. We all know that. Every event has a cause. Now, since we’ve had an experience of causes, what we’ll call secondary causes, the cosmological argument says there must be a primary cause, a first cause, for this causal network or chain that we’ve experienced ourselves. So we all know what it is to insulate our homes and see our fuel bill go down. We see there’s a causal relationship there.
[67:42] we all have seen what it is to plant a peach tree and then eventually see peaches grow and we harvest them and eat them and so we’ve all had experience of events being caused okay so the event of my fuel bill going down was caused the event of eating the peaches was caused and on and on and on and so there seems to be here a principle according to this argument that every event has a cause or to put it more crudely every object has an origin every event has a cause every object has an origin so the cosmological argument starts with empirical premises you’ve all experienced causation or origination and from these observations generalizes that every event or object has a cause or origin, and then says, therefore, the world as a whole must have a cause or an origin.
[68:47] And that’s what we call God. Now, is there anything wrong with this argument? Well, I hope all of you are just I mean, there’s so many fallacies in this argument, it’s just incredible. Five years ago, there wasn’t? Thank you for that personal testimony, Mike. Anybody else would like to give their, as I was once, a natural theologian?
[69:13] Well, let’s go back to the, just so we can pick at this a little bit for fun. Can I generalize from many observations that events have causes, that all events have causes? Do I have any right to do that? It’s a fallacy, isn’t it? I can’t argue from some to all, unless what? I assume the very thing that I’m supposed to be proven. The causation is a universal principle. But now, if causation is a universal principle, can I say that because each event has a cause, that all events together have a cause?
[69:54] That’s another logical fallacy, right? Fallacy of composition. What’s true of the parts is not necessarily true of the whole, and yet the cosmological argument commits that fallacy. Can I argue that what I know from my natural experience is a foundation for what must be true of the supernatural? That’s Kant’s argument that, at best, the cosmological argument tells us something about a natural cause, of all things. It didn’t tell us anything about a supernatural cause, or else we would have the fallacy of equivocation. Our premises would mean one thing. Our conclusion would mean another when we talk about causes.
[70:37] So, well, then there’s the child’s question, too, and just about any unbeliever at the university can figure this out. When the cosmological argument’s given, every event has a cause, naturally we’re going to ask ourselves, well, then what’s the cause for the event we call God? If every object has an origin, what’s God’s origin? And Christians, I think, are notoriously embarrassing, you know, in the face of that kind of argument. You know, they always say, well, it’s got to stop somewhere. To which Schopenhauer said, well, why shouldn’t it stop at the world?
[71:16] If you’re going to take this taxi and arbitrarily get out of the taxi, then you can choose where you get out. Okay, so the cosmological argument, though it is very popular, in fact, as Mike and others might testify, In evangelical circles, there are people who say, this is where the action is, right? Cosmological argument can be sliced and diced.
[71:36] So I started out by saying I think there’s an objective proof for God’s existence. Cosmological argument’s not going to be it, or arguments like it. I can give you examples from inductive arguments, too. You like this one about how the New Testament documents are basically reliable, and then we learn about Jesus who made certain claims and he rose from the dead. No other theory can account for that, you know, claim that he rose from the dead, except that, in fact, he did rise from the dead. Really? That’s an amazing leap to me.
[72:07] But if you’re a believer, when you read that stuff, I think I’m probably tuning in to all it. When I first read that stuff, and I hadn’t studied philosophy and so forth, I think I was a senior in high school the first time I encountered what’s called the historic argument for resurrection. It clicked. I said, of course, that’s it. That’s right. Why? Well, because I had the right presuppositions.
[72:28] But then within the Christian worldview, it doesn’t make sense to say that people would claim that Jesus rose from the dead on the swoon theory and on all these other sorts of things. But you know, out there in the world, if you think this is an objective, you know, value free proof from history, boy, you’ve got a real lesson coming to you. So, how then can we objectively prove God’s existence. Let me go back to the cosmological argument and try to resurrect it for you. The cosmological argument, as it’s properly used, makes the mistake of trying to be neutral in our orientation. Everybody put aside their presuppositions. This is reason in a neutral way. And then tries to take observational truths, which are then fallaciously generalized and pushed into the supernatural and all that to show that God exists.
[73:24] And the engine in the cosmological argument, if I can put it that way, is the causal principle. So I’m going to go back and I’m going to give you a cosmological argument, but not one that says, let’s put aside our presuppositions and go to our observations and then generalize and draw deductions and so forth. I am going to go to the causal principle, though. I’m going to say, let’s look at that causal principle. The causal principle, to put it another way, is what we call the foundation of inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning says that I can take instances from my experience and generalize from them either across time or ahead in time.
[74:07] By across time, I mean simply, if I learn certain things about crows, I should be able to generalize about all crows at that very moment. I learn something about the nature of crowness when I study individual crows. But that’s an inductive generalization from particulars to the class of crows, okay, or to the nature or property of crowness. Ahead of time, what I mean by that is I can generalize from events that I’m familiar with to what will happen in the future. So if I’ve dropped an apple, you know, 10 times in the past or I’ve let go of the apple and it has dropped, so I’ve seen the event of letting go of the apple leads to the event of it dropping, I would inductively generalize that the event of letting go of the apple 10 seconds from now will lead to the event or would be followed by the event of it dropping to the ground.
[75:03] Inductive generalization is the basis, then, of our causal reasoning. But can that be justified? Is it reasonable to expect that we can generalize from particular cases to either properties or to future events? Now, what if we can’t? What if it’s not rational to do that?
[75:25] this is where a lot of students drop out of the philosophy class and say I think I’ll go take some psychology instead so who cares about the inductive principle well what I’m assuming here is that you care to be rational I know that you care about the inductive principle because you can’t live without it you can’t reason without it, you can’t use language without it you can’t live your life, simple illustration that many of you have heard We all learn when we stub our toe to try to avoid stubbing our toe next time, right? Why do it? Because we assume that if it hurt in the past, it will hurt in the future. But that, of course, that presumes a certain view of reality, a certain kind of continuity or uniformity in the world in terms of which I can inductively generalize.
[76:15] So I go back to the cosmological argument, pick up the causal principle, and ask now, is there a reason for believing that inductive reasoning is well grounded, that there is causation in the world? And I now address this to the unbeliever and say, now you need to use the causal principle. You need to use inductive reasoning. You’re using it. Is it rational for you to do so? Let’s say this unbeliever has come to me and has said, is it rational for you to be a Christian? Be prepared to give an answer to every man who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you.
[76:51] Is it rational to be a Christian? My approach to him, apologetically, is to ask him, well, is it rational to use the causal principle? Is it rational to engage in inductive reasoning? He says, well, of course it is. And it’s because our scientists have used the causal principle in inductive reasoning that we know that you Christians are irrational. And I say, well, wait a minute, not so fast. How do you know that it’s rational to use the inductive principle? What would have to be true in order for you to use the inductive principle?
[77:25] Now, if you study this or listen to my debates and lectures that I have on this, you already know, the best in the unbelieving world openly admits that there is no justification for induction. No justification in the traditional, narrow, philosophical sense. We can’t offer you some principle which itself is well-grounded by which we could justify the inductive principle. In the end, I already told you, Quine says we use the inductive principle because we’re the kinds of creatures that have survived, and the only reason we’ve survived is because we use it.
[77:58] And when Quine says that in The Web of Belief, at least he’s an honest enough philosopher, I have to respect him for that, he immediately says, and that, of course, is a subtle begging of the question. I’m not quoting him, but it’s worse than that effect.
[78:11] He says something to the effect, in subtle ways, that’s already assuming the inductive principle when I offer that is the rationale for the inductive principle. Okay, so now what I’m getting at is that I am going to offer a proof for the rationality of Christianity. It goes something like this. Without the Christian worldview, rationality itself is unintelligible. That the methods you have been using as a scientist to argue against me as a Christian themselves reduce the subjectivism and skepticism unless you have the Christian worldview as the framework or context for using them. Here I’m not appealing to a rational deductive argument.
[78:53] I’m not saying I’ve got a clear and distinct idea of God’s existence. Nor am I giving a cosmological deduction. I’m not appealing to empirical evidence. I’m not appealing even to pragmatic success, although you can rephrase the argument to look deductive, empirical, or pragmatic in various ways. I mean, if you want to be successful at the game of intellect, then this is a pragmatic argument. But I hope you can all see that though you can metaphorically talk about a transcendental argument in those ways, it’s a distinct form of reasoning that is asking, what is the broader framework in terms of which we do these other things? And my Christian apologetic is to this effect, that if you don’t have the Christian worldview, you’re not able to reason, make sense of reasoning or prove anything at all ultimately i’m not assuming that the unbeliever is able to prove things rationally or empirically what have you and i’m going to try to satisfy and be giving him enough risks for his mill it’s not that i’m going to provide the raw material now that he can use his reasoning process and prove god’s existence i’m going to say your reasoning process proves god’s existence because if god didn’t exist you couldn’t make sense out of reason Thank you.
0:00 PRAYER.
1:06 THE IMPORTANCE FOR CHRISTIANS TO UNDERSTAND TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS (TA) TRANSCENDENTAL REASONING (TR)…Its Relationship To Worldview Considerations: Metaphysics, Epistemology, & Ethics.
2:17 Modern Philosophy’s Abandonment Of WV Considerations…Preview Of Lecture Series:..The Significance Of Kant’s TR.
4:17 Van Til.
4:56 GLB Explains That He Will Show Why He Cares About TR In Terms Of Arguments For GOD’s Existence…DECLARES, GOD’s EXISTENCE IS NOT ONLY OBJECTIVELY TRUE, IT’S OBJECTIVELY PROVABLE.
5:38 (PREPARATORY REMARKS).
5:39 THE NATURE OF PROOF…Epistemological Studies: Fallibilist Tradition.
7:10 – Separating The Question Of The Truth Of GOD’s Existence From Personal Prejudice…
11:45 – An Argument Need Not Be Accepted By Everyone To Be Conclusive…O.J. Simpson Trial…Court System…Cultural Acknowledgment That Proof Is Available; The Difference Between Proof & Persuasion…
14:26 Ad Hominem eg, “I Don’t Like Your Tie”…Fallibilist, All Arguments Are Less Than Conclusive.
16:14 The Distinction Between METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY.
16:35 – Something Can Exist/Can Be Real, Without Us Knowing It.
16:57 – Something Existing & A Person Being Able To Prove It…eg, Planet Uranus.
17:30 – Something Can Exist Even Though A Person Offers Reasons Against It…eg, GLB’s Having/Not Having Diabetes.
18:28 SUMMARY.
19:10 (Introductory Consideration) THE RELATIONSHIP OF FAITH & REASON.
21:02 – GLB Opposes FIDEISM. It’s Defined As Christian Faith Being Independent Of Reason…On The Contrary, GLB Maintains That Christian Faith Is Demanded By Reason.
21:46 – REASON Can Be Affirmed Without Endorsing RATIONALISM, Which (In The Broad Sense) Says That Man’s Mind Is The Highest Authority/Is Autonomous.
22:19 – THE AUTONOMOUS MAN/AUTONOMY … Wrong-Headed Christians Who Want To Promote Autonomous Reasoning To Get People To Believe In The Christian GOD.
24:35 – RATIONALISM Vs. RATIONALITY, Which Refers To Man’s Intellectual Capability…GLB Affirms RATIONALITY Because GOD Made Us To THINK! WE’RE TO USE OUR MINDS TO GLORIFY GOD.(2Cor10:5).
25:42 – The Christian Use Of RATIONALITY Refutes RATIONALISM.
25:58 – (GLB Turns The Table On The AUTONOMOUS/RATIONALIST MAN) GLB Argues That All REASONING Rests Upon FAITH (Note: Faith Doesn’t Go Beyond Reason) …You Can’t Justify REASONING Without A Broader WORLDVIEW. & The Only WV That Will Allow For RATIONAL Procedures Is The Christian WV.
26:45 – WE’RE ARGUING THAT IF ANYBODY REASONS AT ALL, ULTIMATELY THEY’RE BORROWING FROM/ACTUALLY WORKING IN TERMS OF THE CHRISTIAN OUTLOOK ON LIFE!
27:05 HOW ARE WE TO PROVE THAT RATIONALITY ITSELF IS ONLY INTELLIGIBLE/RATIONAL WITHIN THE CHRISTIAN WV?
27:44 THE FOUR GENERAL KINDS OF PROOF/REASONING: 1) RATIONALIST 2) EMPIRICIST 3) PRAGMATIST 4) TRANSCENDENTAL.
29:16 1) …Attempts To Prove Things By Showing They Can Be Deduced Into Self-Evidential Truths That Are Known In A Rational Way…(Dualist) Rene’ Descartes (I think, therefore I am)…Refuted By Bertrand Russell…Continental Rationalism…Spinoza (Theory of Attributes: Substance…Monist)…Leibniz (Infinite Plurality of Substances: Monads).
32:42 SUMMARY: Reduce To Subjectivism.
33:01 2)…Seeing Is Believing…To Know Anything Is To Be Able To Trace What You’re Claiming To Know & Every Aspect Of It, Back To Some Kind Of Observational Certainty…Considerations Of Cognitive Psychology…Refuted By David Hume…John Locke…
36:03 SUMMARY: Falls Apart At The Receptor & Interpretation Angle…Who Knows If There’s Sensorial Unity To Arrive At The Truth…Leads To Categorization Problems…Language Problems…Cultural Relativism…Concept Formation Problems…Can’t Live Up To Its Own Requirements…Ludwig Wittgenstein
42:01 Note The Pattern: Rationalism Reduces To Subjectivism, Therefore Skepticism (RTS,TS). Empiricism (RTS,TS)…The Autonomous Attempt To Find Irrefutable “Common Sense Notions” (RTS,TS).
44:55 Disloyalty & Loyalty To Philosophical Approaches…Naturalizing Epistemology…Kurt Godel.
48:14 The Naive Philosophy Novice…Gordon Stein.
50:44 3)…Who Cares As Long As A Certain Procedure Allows Us To Make Progress, Then Its Rational…Willard Van Orman Quine.
52:07 SUMMARY:..Falls Apart Because It Presumes We Know What Ends To Seek…No Justification For The Normativity Of The End That’s Pursued By What They Call Rationality…(RTS,TS)…GLB Adds More Criticism…John Dewey.
55:15 All Fields Are Reducing To Relativism…When Skepticism Wins Out, You Always End Up With Either Anarchism & Dogmatism…Deconstructivism.
58:11 4)…REASONING WHICH SEEKS THE PRECONDITIONS OF THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF EXPERIENCE (OF THE BROADEST SENSE)…SAYS, THE TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN.
1:06:06 …Translates Into The Christian Context, Where THE EXISTENCE OF GOD CAN ALSO BE PROVEN.
1:06:23 GLB Demonstrates THE TA By Contrasting The Cosmological Argument.
1:11:46 Inductive Argument eg.
1:12:50 Cosmological Argument Revisited.
1:18:19 THE PROOF FOR THE RATIONALITY OF CHRISTIANITY…THE NEXT LECTURE HAS ALL THE DETAILS.
Dr. Bahnsen and Michael Butler co-teach a 1995 summer seminar on transcendental arguments. With clear and jargon-free analysis, this course critiques various traditional theistic proofs, unpacks the philosophical background of transcendental reasoning, defends Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic over against his critics, and above all, equips the saints to prove the objective truth of God’s existence—apart from which one cannot reason, make sense of reasoning, or prove anything at all.
- Four Types of Proof (1 of 10)
- Van Til’s Why I Believe in God (2 of 10)
- Kant in Context (3 of 10)
- Contemporary Transcendental Arguments, Part 1 (4 of 10)
- Contemporary Transcendental Arguments, Part 2 (5 of 10)
- Summary of Transcendental Arguments, Part 1 (6 of 10)
- Summary of Transcendental Arguments, Part 2 (7 of 10)
- Apologetical Transcendental Argument (8 of 10)
- Back to Basics (9 of 10)
- Van Til’s Critics: Hoover, Dooyeweerd, Frame (10 of 10)
