Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Methods III Part 2 (Part 13)

Appreciate cooperation of our congregation, especially these last few weeks when we've had our long services. It's not going to become the rule, I'm sure, but it does. It does kind of cut into Sunday school. And I do need to be brief with you today, but I wanted to talk to you about our twofold apologetical method that we started studying two weeks ago. I think it would be very good if we had a little bit of review ahead of time to make sure that you know what I'm talking about before I launch into an illustration of this. And so the question is, when I speak of our method of apologetics being twofold, what are the two things I'm talking about? I was going to call on Kathleen so that she could review for us, but she's not in her seat, so we'll take someone else. Okay, Craig. Okay. Two steps. One can be called the internal critique of the fool's system of thought, that is, answering him according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits, so that he'll understand that he doesn't have true wisdom. He has nothing to be conceited about. But then the Bible look of Proverbs in particular tells us to not answer the fool according to his folly, because you'll end up in the same boat with him, lest you be like unto him. So let's see if we can put some. Some flesh on these bare bones of apologetical strategy. I just want to take a few minutes to kind of illustrate how you might do this by way of preface, if you're going to do an internal critique, if you're going to criticize from inside the fool system of thought, you need to make sure the fool knows he has a system of thought that he's working with. And what I'm getting at here is most people, apart from maybe individuals that have been trained philosophically or those who have done some reading in the area, most people don't realize that they have a philosophy of life. They don't realize it because they don't stop to ask the questions explicitly that philosophers try to answer and then weigh all the alternatives and choose one. And then they say, aha, this is my philosophy. Doesn't happen that way. Francis Schaeffer once said in the opening lines of his book How Should We Then Live? That most people gain their presuppositions the way people catch the measles. And that's true. You don't think about catching the measles. It infects you. And most people have not thought through their Philosophy of life. They've just kind of inherited it, They've caught it, they've been infected with it. And it was their parents, it was the tv, it was their friends, their schooling. And all through life you are picking up a philosophical perspective, but very few people are waving a flag saying, here's the underlying presuppositions of my perspective. Here's the philosophy that's coming through. You're just getting infected with it without even knowing that it's there, but it is there. The reason I'm telling you this is because most people would say they don't know what their philosophy is, or they would say they don't have a philosophy. Something like that. It will not help you to start out. Usually it will not help you to start out the conversation saying, well, you've got a philosophy of life. Then you'll probably find yourself working that conversation in the next and the next, and convincing them that they have a philosophy of life. But it is important that you know that they have it. Now, in every major philosophical outlook, there are certain fundamental questions that have to be answered. Everyone has to have an answer. And every human being, apart from those who have mental defects, every normally functioning human being has an answer to these questions. The human being may not have stopped to think about them and may not be able to write them out and defend them, but he or she has them. And so I'm going to today just choose one of the very common and easily discussable issues in philosophy that everyone has an answer to. And because everyone has an answer and everyone has the same answer, you're going to find it. You're going to have to work on getting them to realize that their answer cannot be fit into what they think about the world. Ken, everybody has a philosophy of life. Where's the difference between the childish burnout and the adult is uninterrupted. But immat, You're asking, like, at what age I would think children have a philosophy of life too. Well, to talk about child psychology, I think, would take us a little bit afield and we can take it up when I'm not trying to give a real brief lesson, but I would say briefly to you that very shortly after children start being able to manipulate symbols, that is to speak creative sentences. I don't mean creative like you write them down and publish them. But children begin to speak by imitating. And when they start learning how to use words on their own, about that time, they've got a philosophy of life. I realize that's going to strike you as you know, you're not going to have Wittgenstein sit down and talk to a child, you know, philosophy of life in that sense. But you'll catch on to what I'm getting at. They have an understanding of what reality is like and how they know what they know. They just haven't, you know, really stopped to put it into words or to. And a lot of adults get to that place, too. Let's talk about one of the things that most people believe. I think one of the things just about everybody believes. I'm going to use the philosophical expression. But then you're going to have to find ways for you to talk to your milkman or your neighbor or your, you know, your brother or your sister this way. Everyone believes that the future will be like the past. Technically, that's the problem of induction or the uniformity of nature philosophy. But let me explain. Everyone believes the future will be like the past. Let's see if we can find an illustration of this. We don't go to the gas station on the Lord's day. Hopefully we don't have to. But yesterday you went to the gas station and you put gas in your car. And why did you do that? Let's just take one of the most simple procedures in life. Why did you do that? You probably saw the needle inside on the dashboard. That measures your fuel going low or place where you didn't want it to be anyway, lower than it should be. And last time the needle was like that, that meant that you were going to run out of fuel. And so you decided this time with the needle being like that, you're going to go put fuel in the car. Now, what happens when you put fuel in the car? Well, then you're able to start the car. And you can drive so many miles. For some it's shorter, and for some it's longer. But you do know you'll be able to drive a certain number of miles. Is any of this too complicated for anybody? Nah. But every single one of you who puts gas in the car doing just that real simple thing I'm talking about did so because you believed in the uniformity of nature. By the uniformity of nature, I mean that the way things have happened, the causal relationships that you've seen and learned about in the past will also be the causal relationships that we see in the future. For instance, you believe that when the needle is low, the gas tank is low, and when the gas is out, the car doesn't run. Okay. You also believe that when the gas is in the car, all other things being equal, that the car is going to run. But now, what if I were to say to you, well, that was all true in the past, that's true. Probably many of us have had unwilling experiments in this area where we have found out through the scientific method that when the car is out of gas, it doesn't run. We found out that we got to trust that gauge. And by the way, when you say, but I knew times when I wasn't supposed to trust my gas gauges, I think my son's Mustang gas gauge doesn't work so forth, and he's found out the scientific way, that you run out of gas, the car doesn't run. But you see, there's causal connections there too, where the reason we go to fix the gas gauge is because we believe there is some other cause here that's leading me to be misled when I read this gauge. But if the gauge is a property properly functioning gauge, you trust it. You have in the past. And in the past, when you put gas in the car, it's run. And I'm going to ask you the question that everyone's going to say, well, that's just absurd. I'm going to say, why do you think that's going to happen tomorrow morning? Why do you think putting gas in the car will enable it to run tomorrow morning? Maybe the worst thing you could do for getting to work tomorrow is have gas in your car. Maybe your car will not run tomorrow morning unless the tank is empty. You say, well, no, it's not going to be that way. And I say, well, how do you know that the future will be like the past? Now that's the problem of induction, the problem of the uniformity of nature. Now, whenever you talk to somebody about their outlook on life, let's say you talk about coming to church with you and say, oh, well, I don't believe in God. We're going to take somebody who thinks they're an atheist. You want to get this atheist, this person propounding atheism, to talk about what they do believe about the world. Okay? So you got to bring your conversation around to that. And I can't tell you how to do that. Well, that's going to take two sweet rolls and a cup of coffee or what? But you're going to talk to this person. Eventually you say, well, I mean, well, how do you see the world then? I see the world as created by God. And this personal God is someone I'm going to answer to. And I was made to glorify him. And since you don't believe that this world was created by God or that he's there, I mean, what do you believe? So you get the conversation around to that point in whatever way you want to. But when you get the conversation there. Here's one of the things you want to talk about. Well, do you think that the future is like the past? I mean, do you think that we can count on what we've learned from our experiences and observations and causal connections in the past, that that's the way it's going to be tomorrow? Do you believe. I mean, probably you're going to have to go through the same easy illustrations that I have. Most people are not going to say, oh, you mean the problem of induction? Well, my answer to that is they're going to say, what do you mean the future like the past? You say, well, in the past you put gas in your car because you knew that it wouldn't run without gas. Why do you think it's going to be that way on Monday morning? And they're going to say, well, because it always has been. You say, oh, well, then you do believe the future will be like the. In fact, you think it's always been that way. Yeah, doesn't everybody? And now you got them when they say, doesn't everybody? Then what you want to say, please get this in your notes. Then you want to say, everyone believes it, but not everyone has a right to. What do you mean a right to you? You say, well, on your view of the universe, you don't have any reason to expect that Monday's going to be like Saturday or this week like last week or this month like last month. You don't have any reason to believe that at all. I agree with you. The future will be like the past. But you see, you're really talking about a Christian view of the world when you say that. You see, I believe in a sovereign God that controls all things, and he's an orderly God and a good God, and he's made this world so that we could master it and have dominion under him and so forth and so on. I mean, you can say as much of your theology as you want, but what you want to get across is certainly we should believe these things because God tells us and promises so. Now, I don't believe that the uniformity of nature came in with the Noah covenant. So don't get me wrong. But just as an illustration of this, in the Noahic covenant, God says to Noah what that seed, time and harvest will follow each other in regular succession that God is the God of the seasons and he will keep nature uniform. Okay, he was keeping nature uniform before, but here in that covenant we have reference to. That's the kind of God we have. Okay? So I, as a Christian, believe in the uniform of nature. That's why I put gas in my car. I don't get up every day thinking, well, maybe today my car will run without gas. No, I finally, you know, it's kind of like after five or six times running out of gas and it stopped running, the car not going any further. I've now picked up on this little thing, you got to have gas in the car. So. And with the Christian view of the universe, I don't expect, you know, it to be magical or to be occultic or anything. I don't expect the car is going to run on, you know, some kind of demon force tomorrow. If you don't put the gas in the car, it's not going to run. But now what I want to know is, Mr. Unbeliever, Mrs. Unbeliever or whoever you're talking to, why should you believe that on your view of the universe, there is no God that controls everything? On your view of the universe, everything happens randomly. Basically, on your view of the universe, putting gas in my car is a crapshoot, isn't it? Just roll of the dice, maybe it'll work this time, maybe it won't because nature has. You don't have any guarantee of the regularity of nature. Now you know that the unbeliever is not going to fall down dead at that unbeliever is going to put up a fight. So now what do you expect your neighbor to say to that? Your neighbor's going to say, now wait a minute, it's always been that way in the past. And so I have a good reason to expect it to be that way in the future. Take a deep breath because it's at this point you have to point out gently that they are begging the question. To beg the question is to assume the answer to the question in your method of answering the question, because you see, you've got your answer before you get to your answer. When you beg the question, the person who says it's always been that way in the past, and that's why I have a good reason, has forgotten. But the question doesn't have anything to do with the past. The question has to do with the future. Why will Monday morning demand gas in the car? Because it always has in the past. Well, that's irrelevant. The question is, why will the future be like the past? I'm not disputing that it's been that way in the past. What I'm saying is, why do you count on it being that way in the future? And if they say I count on it being that way in the future because it's always been that way in the past. That's just. That's the question all over again. But why do you believe the future will be like the past? That the past has always been like that is no proof that the future will be. So you've learned a couple of very well, actually, three really important philosophical concepts in this real brief lesson this morning. First, you've learned that everyone has a philosophy whether they know it or not. Secondly, you've learned one of the major questions of philosophy, the uniformity of nature, the problem of induction. And thirdly, what have you learned? That you can't beg questions if you're going to be a good philosopher. Now, we have to learn to be polite. We have to be meek and gentle. We have to show the spirit of Christ when we deal with people, but we can't let them weasel out other philosophical problems either. And so you're going to learn to have the discourtesy of pointing out to a person you're begging the question. Okay, each of us will say it in a different way, but you must learn to say that. You must learn to say you do have a philosophical assumption here. Maybe you don't want to use the word philosophy. You do assume something about the nature of reality here, and it turns out you have no reason to assume that, in fact, what you've told me elsewhere, that you don't believe in God would make it really inconsistent for you to believe this thing over here. And now you're going to hear the pragmatic cop out. Well, everyone's got to believe that or we couldn't live. And you're going to say, exactly, we must believe it, because this is God's world and he controls it. And if we don't live according to the truth and in his world, we're not going to get along well. And so you are really guilty before God, aren't you? Because you know the truth, but you won't admit it. And you need to have the courage to tell your friends and your neighbors that they're rebelling against God and running away from Him. Okay, so the story of the gas in the car is just one, and there's going to be more. But I wanted to get you started thinking this way, some practical things you can bring up with people to show that they believe things which could not be the case if you didn't have a Christian outlook. And so that their professed philosophy stands in conflict with what they are really assuming in their day to day affairs. What they are really assuming in their day to day affairs is our outlook on life. And when we get them to see that, we must immediately move to say, then you are guilty for denying, denying the Lord, for not living in faith toward him and trying to naturalize what is a supernatural blessing. Trying to say, well, that's just the way nature is. The next time they, I told you this, be brief. The next time someone refers to nature, boy, you jump on that one. You say nature. This is the scientific concept, the concept of nature. I mean, the pagan Greeks had a concept of nature. And their concept of nature is that the gods filled everything, or that there was a Logos that really ran through the universe. And the Stoic idea of the Logos was not all these little gods like Thales had in everything, but there was one grand cosmic principle that ran through everything. There was really just a pagan idea of there being a supernatural forces. And so you really want the idea of nature. I mean, you sophisticated modern person, you. That's a real easy one to generate a discussion to show that, well, nature is just a way to secularize a concept that is only legitimate within the Christian worldview. The concept of the uniformity of all things. What we call the uniformity of nature. Okay, first of all, questions about today's brief apologetics lesson. Doug Jones, Ph.D. candidate, USC I recognize you. Actually, if it weren't for the time, I'd like to do that for a whole lesson, but let's do it for a minute. Go ahead. Well, the question, yeah, the question is why do those properties persist? You see, if in terms of ancient Greek philosophy, as you know the Milesians, once they got to the place where they were satisfied with the question about what matter is and so forth, they had it wrong. But then they had to face the problem of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Why do things change then? And since properties change, then we're back to the question, if gasoline has these properties, why should we expect gasoline to have those properties tomorrow? Well, it's just a primitive fact about the universe. Well, but you see, if it's only a primitive fact, then it's a fact that it doesn't have to be that way at all. It's random. And tomorrow, just as random matter, the facts of the universe could Change the universe's overall character doesn't have to be unchanging. What's the devil say to that? No, to say that they don't change randomly is the same. Say that we live in a causal nexus, that we can always explain what has happened. But scientists haven't explained everything that has happened. In fact, more and more they study. They don't understand why things happen. But even if they explain the way things have happened, the question is, is the universe of such a nature that you can say ahead of time that it will always be that way? You'll always be able to explain what happens in the universe. And with the devil silenced like that, then now I'm glad Doug did that. I do intend when we stop having these mega long services, which I do hope when we have a longer Sunday school period to do a couple of lessons maybe where we kind of play act how you would talk to somebody. And it will be important for me not always to be using the philosophical terminology. These are questions that even non philosophers will have. Basically what Doug said is, well, you take your explanation back to God. Why can't I leave the explanation just at the level of the universe? Why can't I just say that's just the way the universe is? Well, and the answer was, because if that's just the way that it is, tomorrow it could just be the opposite. In philosophy, the just because answers are always reversible because they're arbitrary. Okay, now, any questions? Well, anything further on today's. Yes. Ellery. Says that what I believe in is a universe governed by law, and time is one of the factors that those laws are. Time can function in the future as well as the past. And so the only question I won't have a good answer for is who made the law? Well, I mean, I could easily go after two or three things you said there, but you gave everything to me at the end, didn't you, when you said the only thing you can't answers that question. Well, okay, so you're not really a naturalist, are you? The naturalist says we don't need a supernatural answer to that, and any answer we have is going to come from natural forces. So if you were going to be a good natural, if I could kind of help you, Mr. Naturalist, and prove your case here, if you're going to be a good naturalist, then I'd say to you, why do you believe the universe is governed by laws? And by the way, on the naturalist approach to life, what is a law? Because it's certainly not something that we encounter in our experience in nature, something I've studied by following what happens when I make changes and all this happens. No, you only study instances, Mr. Naturalist. You study this particular bowl of chemicals, you know, in this particular relationship of another chemical to it and that sort of thing. You don't ever study laws, do you? Because as a naturalist, you can't see them and you can't smell them and you can't touch them. Those laws that you're referring to beg the question. When you say the universe is governed by law, you're saying it's governed by something that's not natural. Laws are not natural. There are laws about nature, but laws are not something we encounter in nature. You can cut down a tree, you can't cut down a law. Until we do what? Oh, I don't think we're talking about deism at all. We're talking about a worldview, one element of which is the uniformity of nature. And what I would say is the deist cannot appeal to the uniformity of nature either. But there's going to be a different kind of argument we. We use with him but another day on that. I am not saying that uniformity takes us only as far as the deist at God. I'm saying that if you start with the Christian worldview, you have an answer and no one else does. Maybe what we should do is have someone play the part of the deist, and I'll show you how the deist. Diaz can't deal with this either.