Dr Greg Bahnsen - Mid-Level Apologetics: Four Things in All Systems Pt 1 (Part 7)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. All right. As we continue our class tonight, an announcement about next time we come. Lord willing, I will have your midterm exams in hand and we'll pass them out to you. Isn't that bring joy to your hearts? At least the midterm is before you have the real heavy philosophical lesson next time. So see how gracious and compassionate I am. Anyway, I remind you that if you're not taking the course for credit, you may still do the midterm if you'd like me to evaluate it for your own good and so forth. And if you are taking the course for credit, of course you will need to get that in sometime, but I'm not going to tell you when. What may you use on the midterm exam? Anything you want, except somebody else's work, that is. You can't take some other student's exam and copy it. But other than that, you can listen to tapes, you can read my materials, read other books, talk to your pastor, whatever you want. The main thing for me is that you write a good exam. So if you're learning, that's what I want. Is it true or false? No. Well, there will be a truth and false evaluation, yes, whatever you want. You won't get credit until it's in though, so it's on you. Third thing that we want to look for when we are talking to our unbelieving friends are presuppositions that do not comport with each other. You already know what a presupposition is, and you know that everyone has them. What you're going to find out when you talk to your unbelieving friend is that he or she has has presuppositions that don't get along with each other, their intention with each other. When we talk to unbelievers about their views, their worldviews in particular, we have to be sensitive to hear and discern what their controlling assumptions about the nature of reality are about the nature of knowledge, and about what is right or wrong in human behavior. Although not everyone thinks clearly and specifically about such matters in the abstract. That is, they don't just come and say, well, I wonder what the nature of reality is. It doesn't come out that way, obviously. And although not everyone will be able openly and explicitly to state what his operating assumptions are, nevertheless, everybody utilizes some basic perspective regarding reality, knowledge and conduct. Remember, those are the three things you're looking at what is real, what exists, how do you know what you know? And how should we live our lives? To put it another way, everybody does philosophy, but not everybody does it well. Not everybody reflects self consciously about such matters. Not everyone seeks to be cogent or consistent in their outlook. And so Christians must learn to listen closely to what critics of the faith are saying and seek to identify what is being taken for granted by the critic. We must point out, and then we must analyze and criticize the presuppositions of our opponents. And in the nature of the case, the conflict between the tenacious unbeliever and the faithful believer will come down to a matter of their differing worldviews. When we identify the presuppositions of the unbeliever, we will see in case after case that the unbeliever has an unmanaged and irresolvable tension between his operating assumptions. His basic beliefs about reality or about knowledge or about ethics do not comport with each other. They don't work harmoniously. In many cases, they just outright contradict each other. So I'm going to give you a series of simple illustrations. You can start with this. When you talk to people, I'm giving you this. I'm priming the pump for your discussion. Here is Memorize this script. Here's some stuff you can use now, okay, But I want you to know these are only illustrations. You can develop your own too. 1. Think about the tension within someone's ethical perspective. Imagine that your neighbor expresses an outlook which is summarized in the words of that well known beer commercial. You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can get. Basically, your neighbor holds that pleasure is the leading value in life and that there will be no accountability for our conduct after this. Life, you only go around once. Grab for all the gusto you can get. But now imagine that this same neighbor of yours expresses indignation over a well documented instance of police brutality, or over the oppression and invasion of a weaker nation by some tyrant or sentences handed down to rapists, or over bribes being accepted by government officials, or over racial hatred or discrimination. Just take your pick. Here you have two views. Pleasure is the highest value, but brutality or bribes or what have you is to be condemned. You need to expose the conceptual tension in this. Now, we've had illustrations like this in this class already, so this is not new. You recognize the procedure. If policemen or rapists or tyrants get pleasure from what they're doing to other people, then they should on the neighbor's Hypothesis, go for all the gusto you can get. Pursue those very activities which your neighbor turns around and condemns. Now, what are you doing here? You are saying you have got underlying assumptions that don't fit together. They conflict. Your worldview is in disarray. Or let me give you another example. Tension over what the unbeliever says about knowledge, their epistemological perspective. Imagine you have a friend who is critical of your Christian faith, saying that you are superstitious and you're gullible. According to him, we should not believe anything that's not verified by observation or more broadly, by our sense perceptions. To put it simply, seeing is believing. The problem with Christians, he thinks, is that they believe things simply on alleged authority. God speaking in the Bible. And so you discuss this further with your friend and you ask how he came to hold the view that knowledge is limited to observation. And he explains, well, he's been taking a course at the local college, or he's been reading a book from the library, and the teacher or the writer has convinced him you can only trust your senses in determining what to believe about the world. Duh. Can you not see the problem here? He says you can only trust your senses. You can't trust authority. So you Christians are superstitious, you say, well, how do you know that? Well, because the local university professor said so. Yeah. So what we have here is a conflict of authorities. And believer doesn't see that tension. Your friend criticizes Christians for believing things not by observational verification, but on the authority of another. And yet he himself has come to believe what he does, not by observational verification, but on the authority of another. Actually, the tension is much worse than that. Let me press harder. Regardless of how he came to his view that knowledge is limited to observation, that view is self contradictory. Imagine some things which we know and can verify by the use of our senses. I know that a bird is chirping outside the window. I know that fire is hot. I know that malaria is relieved by quinine. I know that my son mowed the lawn. I know such things because I perceived them. Or I could have perceived them with my own senses. Now, what about this? Your friend claims to know that knowledge is limited to observation. Did he have any sense perception of that alleged truth like I watch my son mow the lawn. Did anyone watch? It become the case that all knowledge is limited to sense perception. Anybody see that in the world? Hear that? Touch that, smell that? Of course not. You can't observe a conceptual limitation, much less. Less a universal conceptual limitation. The unbeliever didn't see that all knowledge is limited to what we can see, and therefore there's an irresolvable contradiction in our friends thinking presuppositions that don't comport with each other. Or let me give you a different kind of example, one from the nature of reality metaphysics. Imagine that your professor at school teaches a behavioristic view of man, claiming that all human behavior, all human behavior is determined by antecedent factors, particularly stimulus, response, conditioning, and that all human behavior is predictable. If we know what those factors are that went into the conditioning of this human organism, the professor says, ultimately and in principle, free will. Human free will is an illusion. All of us think and do what we have been conditioned to think and do, given the variable factors of our environment. Imagine further that when it comes time for you to take the final exam in this professor's course, you cheat on the exam and you're caught by. The professor is indignant. He insists on imposing a strict penalty. Flunk the course. Maybe. Now, if he does so, he exposes an open conflict within his views of human nature, doesn't he? By punishing you, he assumes that you were free to choose how to approach taking your test. You could study hard and prepare to answer the questions on your own, or you could more efficiently ride upon the effort put into the test by the student from whose paper you copied, not help doing what you did. Given your previous conditioning and the variables of your environment, it would be senseless to punish you for doing what you predictably did. Yet this is precisely what the professor had taught you in class about human nature in the first place. Presuppositions that do not comport with each other. Fourth illustration. There's often tension between one's theory of knowledge and one's theory of reality, between one's epistemology and one's metaphysics. Imagine that you have a colleague at work who graduated from college and fancies himself somewhat intellectual about matters of religion. According to him, there is no God and no spiritual realm. That is, there are no spiritual events, that no spiritual forces whatsoever. Moreover, this colleague at work finds it intellectually impossible to accept the Christian outlook because it contains what he deems logical contradictions within itself. The Bible says God is one, yet three, that God is loving and all powerful. But there's evil in the world. Nonetheless, he says, those are logical contradictions. So you can't accept the Bible. According to him, we cannot know anything to be true, which conflicts with the laws of logic, the veiled problem in the Thinking of your colleague is that his view of reality, his view of metaphysics, that there are no spiritual or non material entities. His view of reality does not comport with his view of knowledge, that knowledge can only be according to the laws of logic. He cannot simultaneously and consistently be committed to the laws of logic and the view that reality is solely physical in nature, can he? Why is that? Because the laws of logic are not physical. You can't stub your toe on the laws of logic. Can't accidentally lose a law of logic in the laundry hamper. Laws of logic are not physical things. And so if he says only the physical world exists, then he can't appeal to such things as laws of logic. His view of reality and his view of knowledge don't get along with each other. Okay. Oh, I see some questions now. Yes. Isn't there also a problem with that statement? Because you can't validate the statement that only the laws of logic are valid by doing something. Yeah, we're going to talk about logic in our next session, so we'll talk a little more in detail, Dan, but you can press further. When an unbeliever says we have to follow the laws of logic, you can say, why? How do you verify the laws of logic? What's your foundation? Given your worldview, why should there be any laws of logic at all? Question I was hearing off pretty much the same thing as that if he's denying the spiritual realm, then he can't even positively state that there is no spiritual at all because he's using a logical argument. Exactly. Yeah. And as many of you might know, this is kind of the main turn of the argument in my debate with Gordon Stein. Debate is impossible. Without laws of logic, you don't believe there's anything except the material realm. So there can be no laws of logic. It makes no sense for you to be debating. And then he didn't. Yeah, he didn't like it when I said so. When you showed up for the debate, you lost the debate. Yeah. And went over his head. We might mention just here that talking about laws of logic should remind us that apologists ought to know a little bit about logic themselves. Right. I don't want you to have the idea that because we think the laws of logic require a certain worldview that somehow we're indifferent. You ought to be very good at logic. And I won't try to sell you on taking my course on critical thinking so you'll know more about logic and so forth, because that would be inappropriate at this point. But Vic, will take your name afterwards if you'd like to. Anyway, you should know something about the laws of logic, because one of the things you're going to do when you talk to unbelievers is point out how illogical their thinking is. When you see fallacies and reasoning made by the unbeliever, they should be pointed out to the unbeliever. What are fallacies and reasoning? Let me go over some real quick. This is not in the place of a course on logic at all. But what if the unbeliever argues, well, I can't believe these things that are in the Bible because I know some Christians that are really, you know, unkind or wretched people. You know, I look at these television evangelists and I see what hypocrites they are. Well, of course, if you had studied logic, you'd know that's an ad hominem fallacy, arguing not against the truth of what's being said, but against the person who is saying it. So that kind of fallacy, if you had studied logic, you would point out the unbeliever were to use it. Sometimes unbelievers will argue from ignorance. They'll say, well, you can't disprove this. And so that shows that it's true. It's called what the fallacy of arguing from ignorance or from a lack of positive evidence to the contrary. Sometimes unbelievers will rest their conclusions on an appeal to authority. They'll say, well, the university professor felt that the Bible wasn't historically reliable and you need to point that out. Well, you're just appealing to someone else's authority. You're responsible to have some reasoning on your own about these things. Unbelievers commit what are called formal fallacies. Many times their reasoning will be something like, well, if this premise is true, then this second premise follows from it. And then they'll say, but this first premise is not true, and therefore the second premise is not true either. That is fallacious. That's saying if P, then Q, not P, therefore not Q doesn't follow at all. Q may be independently true of P. And so that is a fallacy in formal reasoning. You should be aware of unbelievers will make the opposite mistake. They'll sometimes say, if P, then Q Q is the case, therefore P must be the case, which doesn't follow either. That's the fallacy of affirming the consequent. You want an example? If Shakespeare wrote Paradise Lost, then Shakespeare is a great author. Shakespeare is a great author, therefore he must have Written Paradise Lost. That's the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Unbelievers will use this kind of reasoning pattern. You should point it out when they do. Sometimes unbelievers will reason and use terms which are nothing more than what we call an abstraction or a hypostatization or a reification. Have you ever heard the commercial that says it's not nice to fool mother Nature? Well, there's no such thing as Mother Nature. Now unbelievers will not come out and say Mother Nature. But watch how often when you talk to the unbeliever, you'll say, well, in nature or nature does the following. Well, there's no such thing as nature. That's just a general term for a whole series of events or items. And you need to point that out that the unbeliever is treating something that is not really a concrete entity as though it were. And sometimes we'll personalize it. Evolutionists do this all the time. It's amazing how evolutionists talk about the natural order as though it were an architect or a designer or an artist. They treat the natural world like it has these personal qualities and you've got to, you know, pop that balloon. You've got to say, hey, wait a minute, nature. There is no such thing as nature, much less have you the right to make it personal. Alright, so that's just a few examples of logical fallacies that you want to look for when you're dealing with unbelievers. In all seriousness, if you wanted to know more about that, we have courses on logic at the study center. We can teach you. The fourth thing that you want to be looking for when you're arguing with the unbeliever will be behavior which betrays professed belief. Behavior which betrays professed belief. It is useful and necessary for the defender of the faith to point out that it's not a mark of rationality for a person to assert one thing, then live contrary to it. Think about that. That's not a mark of rationality to assert that one thing is true, then live in a way that is contrary to what you just asserted. Now that can be considered a kind of moral hypocrisy to say one thing and do another, but it's equally, equally a form of irrationality, or if you will, equally a form of inconsistency within one's reasoning. And the reason why you can see it as an irrationality is that one belief is at work when the unbeliever linguistically asserts the position. But A conflicting belief is evident when he behaves in a way contrary to that position and the life of the unbeliever. This is of course what Francis Schaeffer was so very good at pointing out. The life of the unbeliever is riddled with that kind of inconsistency, asserting one thing but not living according to it. Living contrary to it. The unbeliever will presuppose human dignity and will attend a funeral to honor a dead friend or a dead relative. Even though this same unbeliever previously argued that man is in principle no different from any other product of evolution, like a horse or a dog. And yet we don't treat fellow men like horses and dogs. The unbeliever will insist that man is nothing more than a complex of biochemical factors that are controlled by the laws of physics. And then the unbeliever will kiss his wife and children when he goes home as though they share love with each other. The unbeliever will argue that in sexual relations anything goes, there are no moral absolutes, but then indignantly condemn child molesters or morally repudiate necrophilia. The unbeliever will suggest that things which happen in the universe happen randomly, just by chance, but then turn right around and look for regularities or law like explanations of events and uniformity and predictability in the things that are studied by natural scientists. You see, the non Christian does not have a workable worldview. And at every point, at every turn in his life, he exposes the weakness of his worldview. So what do we do? Let's see if we can recapitulate. Then what is our method going to be in dealing with unbelievers? First of all, we want to take care of intellectual debris, if you will, prejudicial conjectures that may be there to if you will make the unbeliever quiet long enough to listen to what's really at stake. Secondly, we want to expose that there are different worldviews at stake here. That the unbeliever has a certain view of reality. How he knows what he knows and how he should live his life, which stands in principle over against Christianity. Thirdly, we want to show that those things that the unbeliever takes for granted and things that we may agree with don't make any sense on the unbelievers worldview. Want to show that only on the Christian worldview does it make sense to raise your children with kindness, or to believe in the laws of logic, or to expect science to have an accurate view of the world and be predictable and so forth. Fourthly, you want to point out that the unbeliever actually has internal contradictions in his or her worldview, presuppositions that don't comport with each other or behavior that betrays the professed beliefs that the unbeliever is given. And then fifthly, I said, you want to conclude that the unbeliever is being arbitrary as well as inconsistent. And that's the highest sign of irrationality, that kind of arbitrariness. The unbeliever has no right to reject Christianity because the unbeliever has no foundation to stand on at all. The only way the unbeliever could argue is if the unbeliever had a Christian worldview. Now, let's come back for just a moment to an image that I used very early on in the class. It's a nice little illustration that Dr. Van Till used to use. And I think it made initial sense to you when I first used it. But I wonder now if you don't understand much better how to get hold of this and carry it home. Dr. Van Till said the unbeliever is like a little rebellious child sitting on his father's lap who reaches up and slaps his father in the face. But you see, the child couldn't even insult his father if his father were not holding him. And in the intellectual realm, in the intellectual realm, we want to point out, the unbeliever couldn't even argue if he wasn't relying upon what his heavenly father had revealed to him about the nature of reality, knowledge and human behavior. If the unbeliever didn't know these things in his heart of hearts, he'd have no basis for argumentation. So his attempt to use an argument against God is in fact an attempt to undermine the very foundation of arguing. Or as Dr. Van Till has put it, and I like to do this when I debate with people, the proof of God's existence is that without him you couldn't prove anything. He is the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of anything. That's a big sentence, but isn't this great? We're only in our fourth session and now when I say that you. Yeah, I know what that means. I've got a handle on that. That's what we're talking about here. Christianity is the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of anything. Nothing makes sense if the unbelievers worldview, his philosophy is pressed and pressed and pressed. If he's forced to see what his presuppositions are and then be consistent with them. He couldn't make sense of those things that he takes for granted in life. And that is, I think, the most powerful way to defend the faith. And it also comports with. That fits in well with what we've studied in the Bible thus far in our course about how we should presuppose the truth of God, even when we're arguing with those that don't hold that presupposition. Remember how Proverbs gives us this twofold apologetic. This is by way of review. Now answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceits. Press the unbeliever about how his presuppositions don't comport with each other or with his own behavior. But don't answer the fool according to his folly. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like unto him. You have to set over against the foolishness of the unbeliever that worldview that does make sense out of human existence, out of logic and science and ethics and all the rest. So we have a twofold apologetical approach, ultimately. Now here I'm not talking about the steps one and two. The twofold approach is an indirect argument. We're looking at different worldviews to see which can provide the preconditions of intelligibility. I want you to write that down. Then I'm going to go slow and just make sure you understand that we're comparing worldviews to see which provides the preconditions of intelligibility. You know what a worldview is? The most basic assumptions, network of assumptions a person has about reality, knowledge and ethics. And we're asking which worldview provides the preconditions, that is, which one gives the presuppositions necessary to make sense out of everything. The preconditions of intelligibility. Which worldview makes sense out of raising your children with kindness? The preconditions of. When someone says, you should be kind to children, what do you have to believe to make that statement intelligible, understandable? It doesn't make sense to assert that apart from the presuppositions that the Bible gives us about God and man and children and all the rest. So apologetics. I know that these words can sound very sophisticated intellectual, but presuppositional apologetics amounts to something that you all can get hold of. Get a handle on this. You want to show that the unbeliever couldn't argue about anything given his worldview. In fact, he couldn't make sense out of anything. Operas, raising children, science or ethics. Now, we have a little bit of time left in our class tonight, so what I thought I would do if I was able to finish in time is kind of take an unbeliever to pick on. See if we can't illustrate how to do apologetics in terms of a concrete illustration. We've been dealing with a lot of unbelievers that, you know, I put words in their mouths and so forth. So let's take a living. Well, he's not living anymore, but an actual unbeliever in what he had to say. And let me try to point out how this approach to apologetics might be used that, okay, I'm just looking around like, what's that? Like, where are you going to pick somebody? Oh, no, I'm not going to pick one of you to be an unbeliever. We might do that sometime. I'd like to pick on Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell once wrote an essay, why I Am Not a Christian. And in this essay we find the text of a lecture that he delivered to the National Secular Society in London in the year 1927. To be fair, Russell commented that the constraints of time prevented him from going into great detail or saying as much as he might like about the matters which he raises in the lecture. Nevertheless, what he does say is quite enough to find fault with. Russell argued that he could not be a Christian for the following four reasons. Now I'm just summarizing his essay. You can pick it up for yourself. Why I'm Not a Christian. It's real famous. Russell says he cannot be a Christian. One because the Roman Catholic Church is mistaken to say that the existence of God can be proved by unaided reason. The Roman Catholic Church is mistaken to say that the existence of God can be proved by unaided reason. Two, he said serious defects in the character and teaching of Jesus show that he was not the best and wisest of men, but actually morally inferior to Buddha and Socrates. Serious defects in the character and teaching of Jesus show that he was not the best and wisest of men, but actually morally inferior to Buddha and Socrates. Three, he said people accept religion on emotional grounds, particularly on the foundation of fear, which is not worthy of self respecting human beings. Russell said people accept religion on emotional grounds, particularly on the foundation of fear, which is not worthy of self respecting human beings. And four, his last argument, the Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. So now Bertrand Russell has had his say. Let's assume what would we do if we were going to, in a presuppositional fashion, deal with this? First of all, let's look at some internal tensions in Russell's own outlook. Let's look at some internal tensions. What's outstanding about the litany of complaints that I've just listed against Christianity is Russell's arbitrariness and inconsistency. This ringing any bells? Dr. Bonson said those are the two things you want to keep hammering, arbitrariness and inconsistency in a person's worldview. Notice that the second reason that he offered for rejecting Christianity, that there are serious defects in the character and teaching of Jesus, showing he's not the best and wisest of men, but actually inferior to Buddha and Socrates. That that second reason presupposes what? That there's some absolute moral standard or some absolute standard of moral wisdom by which somebody could grade Jesus as either inferior or superior to others. Notice. Third, the third reason, which was what? People accept religion on emotional grounds, particularly on the foundation of fear, which is not worthy of self respecting human beings. That reason presupposes a fixed criterion for what is and what is not worthy of self respecting human beings. Then again, the complaint that he expresses in the fourth reason, which is the Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. That complaint would not make any sense unless it's objectively wrong to be an enemy of moral progress. Indeed, the very notion of moral progress itself assumes an established benchmark for morality by which to assess progress in morality. Now if Russell had been reasoning and speaking in terms of the Christian worldview, here's a tent to assess moral wisdom, human worthiness and moral progress, as well as to adversely judge the shortcomings of others in these matters would be understandable. It would be quite expected because Christians have a universal, objective and absolute standard of morality in the revealed word of God. So what am I doing? I'm not answering the fool according to his folly, lest I be like unto him. I'm showing. Well, that would make sense on the Christian worldview to assess moral progress, moral superiority, inferiority, whatever. But obviously Russell didn't mean to be speaking as though he adopted a Christian perspective. On what basis then could Russell issue his moral evaluations and judgments? In terms of what view of reality and knowledge did he assume that there was anything like an objective Criterion of morality by which to find Christ and Christians and the Church lacking. You see, Russell was embarrassingly arbitrary in this regard. See, there's the final point of my method, you know, that's the final punch. Look how arbitrary you're being. He just took it for granted as an unargued philosophical bias that there was a moral standard to apply and that he could presume to be the spokesman and the judge who applies it. By the way, if I had time here, I might add. As an aside, you all should read the chapter on Bertrand Russell in Johnson's book Intellectuals. He discusses the lives of Rousseau and Hemingway and Sartre and Russell and others, these guys who are purported to be the leaders of a new humanity and to tell the world how to live its life and so forth. And you look at the scumness of these lives and Russell's in particular, you say, what right have you, of all people, to judge morality? It's really amazing. But the point that I'm making is that Russell took it for granted that there was a moral standard to apply and he could presume to be its spokesman and judge. One could easily counter Russell by simply saying that he had arbitrarily chosen the wrong standard of morality. To be fair, Russell must grant to his opponents just as much arbitrariness in choosing a moral standard, and they may then select a different one from his own. And then his argument goes down in defeat. He chooses a moral standard by which to judge Jesus, but if he's arbitrary, I have a right to choose a moral standard. And there goes Russell. But there's more. By assuming the prerogative to pass moral judgment, Russell evidenced that his own presuppositions failed to comport with each other. Step three. Here, in offering a condemning value judgment against Christianity, Russell engaged in behavior which betrayed his professed beliefs elsewhere. Four up here on the board. In his lecture, Russell professed that this was a chance world which shows no evidence of design and where laws are nothing more than statistical averages describing what has happened. Let me say that again. In his lecture, Russell professed that this was a chance world which shows no evidence of design, and that laws are nothing more than statistical averages describing what has happened. He professed that the physical world may have always existed and that human life and intelligence came about in the way explained by Darwin, evolutionary natural selection. Our values and hopes are what he said our intelligence can create. Our values and hopes are what our intelligence can create. The fact remains that according to the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life on this planet will die out in due course, he said. Now this is simply to say that human values are subjective, fleeting and self created. Think about it. This is a chance world. Laws are only statistical averages describing what has happened. The physical world is all there is. Human life and intelligence came about by evolutionary natural selection. Our values are what our intelligence creates. Ordinary laws of science show that human life will die out in due course on this planet. That's his worldview. But that's his worldview. Human values are subjective, they're fleeting, they're self created. To put it briefly, they're relative. Holding to this kind of view of moral values, Russell was utterly inconsistent then in acting as though he could assume an altogether different kind of view of this declaring an absolute moral evaluation of Christ or of Christians. One aspect of Russell's network of beliefs rendered another aspect of his set of beliefs unintelligible. It's amazing. He's one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century and he can be sliced and diced just that easily. He offers. You see his own head on a platter when he says, this is a chance world, human life's going to die out. Values are based on fleeting intelligence and natural selection. And then he turns around and says, but we can absolutistically say Christ and Christians, the Bible, the Church are wrong. The same kind of inner tension within Russell's beliefs is evident in what he had to say about the laws of science. On the one hand, such laws are merely descriptions of what has happened in the past, says Russell. On the other hand, Russell spoke of the laws of science as providing a basis for projecting what will happen in the future, namely the decay of the solar system. The leading philosopher of the 20th century, in a public lecture, who at one point in the lecture says laws are only descriptions of the past statistical averages. Another part of the lecture says the laws of science show us the solar system will die out someday. You can't have it both ways, only past description, the other providing a basis for predictability, projecting what will happen in the future. This kind of dialectical dance between conflicting views of scientific law or between conflicting views of the nature of the physical cosmos is characteristic of all unbelieving thought. Such thinking is not in harmony with itself and thus is irrational. In the first reason that Russell gave for why he couldn't be a Christian, that the Roman Catholic Church is mistaken to say that the existence of God can be proved by unaided reason, he alludes to the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, that the existence of God is Provable by the natural man, by unaided human reason. Russell then turns to some of the more popular arguments advanced for the existence of God, which are supposedly based on this unaided reason. And he easily finds them wanting. I can do the same thing, so can you. The traditional arguments for God's existence can be undermined fairly easily. It goes without saying, of course, that Russell thought he was defeating these arguments of unaided reason by means of his own superior unaided reason. Russell did not disagree with the Roman Church that man can prove things with his natural reason apart from supernatural grace. Indeed, at the end of his lecture, Russell called his hearers to a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. Russell simply disagreed that unaided reason takes one to God. He agreed unaided reason can prove things, but it doesn't prove God. In different ways and with different final conclusions. Both the Roman Church and Russell encouraged men to exercise their reasoning ability autonomously, that is, apart from the foundation and the restraints of divine revelation. Now, as a Christian, I can't fail to expose this commitment to unaided reason for the unargued philosophical bias that it is throughout his lecture. Russell simply takes it for granted that autonomous reason enables man to know things. He speaks freely of his knowledge of what atoms actually do, of what science can teach us, of certain quite definite fallacies committed in Christian arguments, etc. That simply won't do. As the philosopher, Russell here gave himself a free ride. He hypocritically failed to be as self critical in his reasoning as he beseeched others to be with themselves. The nagging problem which Russell simply did not face is that on the basis of autonomous reasoning, man cannot give an adequate and rational account of the knowledge we gain through science and through logic. Scientific procedure assumes that the natural world operates in a uniform fashion, in which case our observational knowledge of past provides a basis for predicting what will happen in future cases. However, autonomous reason has no basis whatsoever for believing that the natural world will operate in a uniform fashion. Russell himself at times asserted that this is a chance universe. Well then, how can you rely on any of the projections of science? There is no uniformity of nature that you can count on. How could he reconcile this view of the nature. Excuse me, this view of nature being random with his view that nature is uniform so that science can teach us. He just couldn't put these two parts of his philosophy together. And so it is with the knowledge and use of the laws of logic. After all, Russell accused Christians of fallacious reasoning. He was resting on the laws of logic, but the laws of logic, as we've already said tonight, are not physical objects in the natural world. They're not observed by man's natural senses. Moreover, the laws of logic are universal in character. They're unchanging in character, or else they would reduce to relativistic preferences for thinking rather than prescribed regulations for our thinking. But Russell's autonomous reasoning couldn't explain those characteristics of logical loss. How could Russell explain the universality and the unchanging and immaterial nature of the laws of logic? An individual's unaided reason is limited in the scope of its use and experiences, in which case, because it's limited, it can't declare anything to be universally true. On the other hand, an individual's unaided reason is in no position to dictate universal laws of thought or to assure us that these stipulations for the mind will somehow prove applicable to the world of thought or matter outside of the individual's mind. And so here Russell's worldview has these internal tensions which cannot provide a foundation for the intelligibility of science or logic. His unaided reason could not account for the knowledge which men readily gain in God's universe, a universe that is sovereignly controlled. That's why it's uniform and interpreted in light of the Creator's revealed mind. That's why there are immaterial laws of thought that are universal. And then in Russell's lecture, we see a series of prejudicial conjectures and logical fallacies which I'll have to hurry to cover for you here if we're going to get out on time. One stands in amazement that the same Bertrand Russell who could lavish ridicule upon past Christians for their ignorance and lack of scholarship could come out and say something as uneducated and inaccurate as historically. It is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all. And if he did, we do not know anything about Him. Amazing. An educated man could say that kind of thing. Even forgetting secular references to Christ in the ancient world, Russell's remark simply ignores the documents of the New Testament as early and authentic witnesses to the historical person of Jesus. Given the relatively early dates of these documents and the relatively large number of them, if Russell doubted the existence of Jesus Christ, he must have either applied a conspicuous double standard in his historical reasoning, or he must have been agnostic about virtually the whole of ancient history. Either way, we're given an insight into the prejudicial nature of Russell's thinking when it came to considering the Christian religion. Perhaps the most obvious logical fallacy Evident in Russell's lecture comes out in the way he readily shifts from an evaluation of Christian beliefs to a criticism of Christian believers. And he should have known better because at the very beginning of his lecture Russell said, I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently and according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. That is, the object of Russell's criticism should be by his own testimony, not the lifestyle of individuals, but the doctrinal claims which are essential to Christianity as a system of thought. The opening of his lecture focuses upon his dissatisfaction with those beliefs. Nevertheless, toward the end of his lecture, Russell's discussion turns in the direction of fallaciously arguing against the personal defects of Christians, how they enforce narrow rules contrary to human happiness. He argues against the supposed psychological genesis of their beliefs in emotion and in fear. That is, he indulges in the argument, the fallacious argument that we call ad hominem, arguing against the man himself. Even if what Russell had to say in these matters was fair minded and accurate, it's not at all the fact would remain that Russell hazard to the level of arguing against a truth claim on the basis of his personal dislike and psychologizing of those who personally profess to claim Christian beliefs in other settings. Russell the philosopher, would have been the first to criticize a student for pulling such a thing in class. It is nothing less than a shameful logical fallacy. Notice briefly other defects in his line of reasoning. Russell presumed to know the motivation of a person in becoming a Christian. He said Christians are motivated by fear and emotion. Though in Russell's theory of knowledge he had no warrant for thinking that he could discern such things, especially at a distance. How could Russell know a person's motives? How could he know the motives of people who lived hundreds of years ago? Moreover, he presumed to know the motivation of a whole class of people based on a very, very small sampling from his own present experience. These are little more than hasty and unfounded generalizations that tell us, if anything, only about the state of Russell's mind and feelings and his obvious emotional antipathy to Christianity. But then, this leaves us face to face with the final devastating fallacy in Russell's case against Christianity. The use of double standards in his reasoning. The final fallacy. The use of double standards in his reasoning. Russell wished to fault Christians for the emotional factor in their faith commitment. And yet Russell himself evidenced a similarly emotional factor in his own personal anti Christian commitment. Indeed, Russell openly appealed to emotional feelings of courage, pride, freedom and self worth as a basis for his audience to refrain from being Christian. Do you hear me? He said I can't be a Christian because those Christians are motivated by emotion. And then he told his audience that if they would be proud and courageous and free and have self worth, they shouldn't be Christians. He appealed to their emotions to not be Christians, all the while condemning people for being Christians based on emotion. Similarly, Russell tried to take Christians to task for their wickedness, as though there could be such a thing in his worldview. Is there anything that's wicked in a chance world? He indicted Christians for their alleged cruelty, wars, inquisitions, etc. But you see, Russell didn't pause for even a moment to reflect on the far surpassing cruelty and violence of non Christians throughout history. Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Marquis de Sade and a whole cast of other butchers were not known in history for the Christian profession of faith after all. You see, this is all conveniently swept under the carpet in Russell's hypocritical disdain for the moral errors of the Christian Church. He indicts Christians for their violence and so forth, but doesn't say a word about the far surpassing violence of the non Christian world. Russell's essay why I'm Not a Christian reveals to us that even the intellectually elite of this world are refuted by their own errors in opposing the truth of the Christian faith. There is no credibility to a challenge to Christianity which evidences prejudicial conjecture, logical fallacies, unargued philosophical bias, behavior which betrays professed beliefs and presuppositions which do not comport with each other. That's what we've seen in Russell's essay. Why wasn't Russell a Christian? Well, given his very weak effort at arguing his case, I would have to conclude that it wasn't for intellectual reasons. This is the final step. What I'm saying is, Russell, you're arbitrary. You're just believing whatever you want to believe and then trying to dress it up in this intellectual garb. Well, I hope that long and somewhat boring illustration will at least be helpful to you in seeing that this is very practical taking this approach, using this method. In our next class again, we'll have not only a final exam, not a final, a midterm exam passed out, but we'll start looking then at some of the underlying philosophical issues that would push us in the direction of presuppositionalism as well. Thanks for coming. This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our bonseninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.