Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Empiricism + Immune from Revision (Part 18)

This message is a continuation of the previous tape and incorporating the laws of logic. Because if we go in and define our terms, we know that bachelors are by definition unmarried men. Do I have to include women in order to be politically acceptable? There's still bachelorettes. Okay, unmarried men. So now we replace the word bachelor here with something that's identical with it. Unmarried men. And we say all unmarried men are unmarried. Now, is that a logical truth? Sure it is. All unmarried things are unmarried, whether they're men, women, whatever it may be. And so again, that would be an analytical truth. All bachelors are lonely. Now, is that an analytical truth or a synthetic truth? Of course, some people would say it's not a truth, and that's probably accurate. There are some bachelors that aren't. But for illustration, just grant that to me that all bachelors are lonely. If it is true that all bachelors are lonely, is it true by definition in the laws of logic? Is it true by analysis? No, it would only be known to be true by doing research. Right? You do your survey, and lo and behold, all the bachelors you run into prove to be lonely people. Okay, so this is the analytic synthetic distinction. Some truths are known to be true by analysis. Other truths are known to be true by a synthesis of our observations or experiences. Seems kind of harmless, Dr. Basum. What's the big deal? Well, it's not so harmless when you realize that the analytic synthetic distinction is a way of specifying what truths are immune from revision. That is to say, as a way of pointing out which truths can be isolated and put into a special category and deemed infallible. The analytic synthetic distinction is used by empiricists to argue anything that's known to be true infallibly must be of the analytical sort only. Analytical sorts are immune from revision, are infallible. Anything that is not analytic is synthetic and therefore is always subject to revision, is always open to further experience or revision in our past experience and correction. So the analytic truths become the infallible truths. And all synthetic truths must be open to, at best, probability assessments. They can't be infallible. After all, they're based on observation. We may have not seen things correctly. We may have observations in the future that correct previous ones, whatever it may be. And for the life of me, I don't know why Christians for years have accepted the analytic synthetic distinction without crying out, God forbid, because I believe that the teachings of Scripture are infallible. But if you try to fit the teachings of Scripture into this framework of thought, this empirical framework of thought. In order for them to be infallible, they would have to be what? Analytic. That is to say, without any informative content about the world. Did you know that all bachelors are unmarried? Doesn't tell you anything about the world. Doesn't even tell you if there are any bachelors. All it says is if something is a bachelor, it's unmarried. Because what. That's what we mean by the word bachelor. If something is going to be significant and tell you about the world, it's synthetic. And if it's synthetic, it's therefore open to revision and no one can know it forever. Absolute certainty. And so Christians come along and they say, we'd like to empirically prove the Christian faith. To you, Empiricism rests upon the analytic synthetic distinction. We don't want you to think we're just making empty claims about all bachelors being unmarried or red barns being red. We want you to know we're making significant synthetic statements about the world, in which case they can only be verified how? Through observation by the facts of history, facts of science and that sort of thing. The analytic synthetic distinction, therefore, is not only a dogma of empiricism, it proves to be an implicit dogma of many Christian apologists. Any significant truth has to be synthetic on this approach. This approach says anything that's going to give you significant information about the world has to be synthetic in character and therefore verified Observationally, anything that you hold to as infallible must be empty of significant information about the world and only an analysis of how we use language, logic. Well, Quine comes along and he says, well, here you have this grand distinction. In fact, it's been a dogma in the history of philosophy for 300 years. You have this analytic synthetic distinction. If it is a distinction, it ought to be distinct. And if the distinction is distinct, how do you determine or identify truths as analytic and truths as synthetic in a way that will be clear in every case? How do you do it? Without arbitrary enumeration and without question begging. The first time students read the two dogmas of empiricism, they often think, why is this such a big deal? This isn't hard to do. Oh, yeah? Try it. How do you enumerate the analytic truths? Or how do you distinguish the analytic truths from the synthetic truths without calling for a linguistic pope to come in and tell you which ones are analytic? Somebody says, well, that's easy. Just go to the dictionary. The problem is that the way in which dictionaries gloss terms already depends upon analyticity doesn't it? That is to say, you cannot specify which truths are analytic by going to a dictionary if the dictionary itself is resting on the analytic distinction. I mean, dictionaries make mistakes. That's part of the problem. But even more, a dictionary is at the end of the line here, not at the beginning. I can't use the dictionary as my linguistic pope, after all, how do I, apart from having somebody come in and just arbitrarily. Could dictionaries arbitrarily give us definitions? No. Dictionaries are supposed to be what most Christians or most non philosophers, I guess, haven't thought much about this, and maybe we're a little sore because our elementary school teachers treated dictionaries like rule books. But you know, a dictionary is not a rule book, is it? A dictionary is a history book. It's basically just a record of how terms have been used and therefore a guideline if you want to be understood in a certain culture, to how you should use your terms. In that sense, it gains a little prescriptive thrust. But basically it's just that's why dictionaries are revised. Ever known that? You go look and you see how dictionaries grow because terms change and they take on new meanings, sometimes opposite meanings. So the dictionary is not going to help us here. And no one has the right to say, I'll be the linguistic pope, that'll tell you which are the analytic truths and which are not. So Quine says, then tell me, without arbitrary enumeration and without question begging, how do you know whether a truth is an analytic truth or a synthetic truth? And here's the answer that first comes to mind and which has been used for many years by philosophers. An analytic truth is one that can be reduced to a logical truth with the interchanging of terms. Salva veritate. Interchanging terms. Saving truth value. Saving truth value. So if I have a sentence, all bachelors are unhappy, it makes no difference whether the sentence is true or false, but it has a truth value. It is either true or false. In this case, let's just say it's false. So it has the truth value of false. Now I know that I can interchange terms in an analytical way. If when I put all unmarried men. Are unhappy. And when we examine it, I mean, this would be a tough one. I shouldn't be using all, because who can do all that work? But for illustration, after we've done our research on all unmarried men, we'd come to the same truth value. It too is false. And then we'd look at Another sentence that deals with bachelors and whether it's true or false, and ask now, is the same sentence true or false if we put unmarried men in there? It would seem that if in all contexts two terms are interchangeable, salva veritate, that is, saving the truth value of the sentence, be it a false sentence or a true sentence, that those terms are interchangeable and therefore all bachelors are unmarried would qualify as an analytic truth. So maybe we've saved the distinction. Quine, here's the way you can tell. Examine the terms and see if when they are interchanged in the various sentences in which they're used, you always say the truth value of the sentence Quine was smart enough to specify the sentence cannot be about the term itself. Okay, bachelors has what, eight letters or whatever? Bachelor's has eight letters. That sentence is not. I mean, the truth of that sentence is not preserved. When you say unmarried men has eight letters, I don't think. But you can see what I'm getting at. You're not supposed to refer to the arbitrary characteristics of the expression itself. But apart from that, in all cases, if the truth value of the sentence where one is found is preserved when the other is put in there, then they're interchangeable. The difficulty is, Quine said that I can give you examples of sentences like that, and nobody in their primitive intuitions is going to say it's an analytic sentence. All creatures with. Well, let me make this singular, okay? All creatures with a heart are creatures with a kidney. Now, is that an analytically true statement? Is that something you know simply by analysis of the concepts? No, we wouldn't, as a primitive intuition, take that as one of the analytic ones. Bachelor and unmarried male was pretty easy. Creature with a heart, creature with a kidney. We say, oh, no, that's not analytically true. And yet the interesting thing is, if you take the expression creature with a heart and the expression creature with a kidney in every sentence where creature with a heart is found, the sentence's truth value is preserved. If you exchange creature with a kidney. Why is that? Because creatures can't exist with hearts and not kidneys, and vice versa. And so in sentences where we find creature with a heart that are false, and you put in creature with a kidney, they'll still be false. In sentences where you have creature with the heart that are true, you can put in creature with a kidney, it'll still be true. Okay, I'm going to let that sink in for a second. This is a devastating reputation, because now what we are up against is the salva veritate way of understanding analyticity won't work. What are you going to do? Give up the analytic synthetic distinction, or are we going to work on it more? Somebody says, oh, no, I think I have a way of saving this. Now what we have to do is strengthen our definition of analyticity to include the notion of necessity, to include the notion of necessity. That is to say, the interchangeability of terms saves the truth value of the sentences in which they are found. Necessarily, that is, we can necessarily interchange terms salva veritate. And this is the move many philosophers have wanted to make. And they'll say, creature with the heart is not necessarily interchangeable with creature with kidney. It doesn't have to be that way, it just happens to be a law of nature. But necessarily, bachelor and unmarried male will be interchangeable. Salva veritate. That'll work. That's great. Now we saved the analytic synthetic distinction. Klein says, except that you forget that the analytic synthetic distinction was proposed in the history of philosophy to explain necessity. And so what we've done is gone. One big circle. People say the necessary truths must be reduced to the analytic truths, because we don't want to get into any kind of Aristotelian metaphysic or Christian theology that has some notion of necessity apart from what our autonomous rational approach will be. Necessity is something that scares philosophers that are empirical in their orientation. Why? Because you don't observe necessity, do you? And if you don't observe necessity, then we don't want to use that concept. And so what they say is we'll put analytic in there in the place of necessary. So you have the analytic synthetic distinction. Empiricists think they've saved the day. Then you challenge and say, well, now explain the distinction between analytic and synthetic for me. And upon attenuation, it turns out they can only explain it by appealing to the thing they were trying to replace, necessity. So the analytic synthetic distinction is not the way in which we find those truths which are immune from revision. So the distinction breaks down. And I'd like to take a few minutes to point out the apologetical implications of the breakdown of the distinction. Maybe I should have said, first of all, the distinction breaks down, and therefore empiricism is a dogma. Breaks down. But we've already said that, so I'm just repeating myself. Empiricism is not a viable epistemology. It entails the dogma of the analytic synthetic distinction, which itself cannot be specified empirically. And so empiricism contradicts itself. But in the process. Quine has taught us a number of other things which are valuable, I think, for us as Christians who want to defend the faith. First of all, we learned that every thinker. Every thinker will grant a preferred status to some of his beliefs or knowledge claims. Everybody has beliefs which are privileged beliefs. They have a preferred status. Now, for many people, they are analytic in this old intuitive sense. I'm not going to give up my belief that all bachelors are unmarried men because that's just central to my use of language. That's fine. But the revisionary immunity that attaches to that sentence is not gained from language and logic. It's gained from the preference given to the sentence. Within a certain framework of thought. Every thinker will grant a preferred status to some of his beliefs or knowledge claims. Such statements in a system of thought are privileged in that they are not allowed to be overthrown by isolated experimentation or simple experience. Quine points out in the second dogma of the two that he explodes that empiricism is wrong, that we believe propositions and we give up propositions on the basis of one by one our observations, as though every belief we have is isolated from every other belief, and the beliefs we have are themselves tied to a particular observation or set of observations, or our disbeliefs to a particular observation or set of observations. That is to say, every belief is evaluated on its own and evaluated by observation. The Quine says, consider this. What if somebody believes that all the gods are immortal and that person believes that Apollo is a God, and then he observes that Apollo dies in battle? Quine says it should be obvious on the empiricist point of view that all the gods are immortal is wrong, right? No, it should be obvious on the empirical point of view that Apollo wasn't a God, right? Wrong. Which is it? Quine says it turns out that the observation of Apollo dying in battle does not itself confirm or refute specifically this premise or that premise. You don't know which way it's going to go. To put it in his clever language, the arrow of modus tollens is ambiguous. Modus tollens is a form of reasoning and logic. It says if P, then Q, not Q, therefore not P. Okay, so if what I believe P is true, the following would be the conclusion would be the outcome of it. But then I observed that that doesn't come out in logic. You can conclude not P, If P, then Q, not P, therefore not Q. The problem is the P here is made up of more than one proposition, isn't it? The proposition that all the gods are immortal, and Apollo is a God. Now, that should mean that Apollo doesn't die in battle. But I observed that Apollo dies in battle. The problem is the ambiguity of the arrow of modus tollens. What will I give up? Maybe I'll say, I guess all the gods are not immortal. Then one of them died. On the other hand, I could equally say Apollo wasn't one of the gods then, because he died. Observation can never tell you which of your previous beliefs to give up. Let me say that again. You want to get that in your notes? A disconfirming observation can never tell you which of your previous beliefs to give up. It may require you to give up one of your previous beliefs, but it can't identify which one it will be. And so what if some people give up the idea that the gods are immortal, but other people give up the idea that Apollo is a God? What do we learn from this? We learned that everybody grants privileged status to certain of his beliefs. Some people, given their worldview, have given a privileged status to Apollo being a God. If he dies, then fine, gods die. Other people have given a privileged status to their theological premise. The gods never die. So if the God Apollo dies, so much the worse for his claim to being a God. But philosophy can't tell you which of these premises to give a privileged status to. Such statements that are given a privileged position in our system of thought are not allowed to be overthrown by isolated experimentation or simple experience within a particular conceptual scheme. Go back to the beginning. Within a particular worldview, there will be central paradigms of truth, center of the web, okay? And these will be accepted as immune from revision as long as the conceptual scheme remains unchanged. A man who is committed to naturalism until he changes his naturalistic presuppositions, you can give him all the historical evidence of the resurrection you want, and he's going to say, boy, that proves there are weird things in history. You say, no, that proves that Jesus was God. Oh, no, that's not possible, because I'm a naturalist. You see, Quine was no Christian. He wasn't trying to help apologetics. But if apologists would just read this, it's so clear, it's so obvious. What a person will hold on to and what he will allow to be refuted by observational evidence is all a function of his worldview, of his primary assumptions, his presuppositions. And with respect to those central presuppositions, interestingly, little obvious argumentation is offered. And yet no one says they're Arbitrary or unsupportable. It's just that they're supported in a strange way. They're not supported by observation. If your central commitment is to observation, it's supported in some other way, usually socially, by this is what we all take to be rational behavior. They are not arbitrary. They are not empty linguistic conventions. They are very significant in terms of the way in which you look at the world. They are substantive, and yet they're not stipulated. So the analytic synthetic distinction gives the idea you can only get that central revisionary immunity kind of strength by emptying the content of what you're saying or emptying the significance of what you're saying is just not accurate at all in terms of the way in which we actually think. These are basic convictions, they're presuppositions, and yet they're not true in virtue of language or definitions alone. They have factual content and factual significance. What a man will deem rational to give up will be relative to his belief system and his central paradigms. Men who are taken to be rational men will nevertheless differ among themselves and as to which truths should be presupposed and their differences of opinion as to which truths should be granted revisionary immunity. Their differences of opinion will not be resolved by trying to appeal to an alleged distinction between analytic and synthetic truths. In fact, conflicts are possible among rational men even over the truths of logic. Amazing. People say, well, rationality is defined by logic. And you say, fine, logic has a history. People haven't always agreed about logic. Who's rational, who's irrational? All depends on your school of thought as to who's the rational one and the irrational one in this debate over logic. So conflicts are possible among rational men over what our central commitments that we give a privileged status to and make immune to revision. More broadly, different fundamental, central, or basic beliefs will bring with them various standards of reasonableness. Another thinker is thought to be irrational because his outlook does not square with one's own basic beliefs or presuppositions. Okay, I go to the naturalistic scientist and I say, your beliefs are irrational because they undermine the possibility of doing science. He says, no, your beliefs are irrational because you think men rise from the dead. The concept of rationality and the standard of rationality is adjusted to what. What you believe to be true. Now, in everyone's web of beliefs and everyone's system of opinions, there's going to be degrees of revisionary immunity. That is, everyone looks upon their beliefs as more or less necessary, the ones at the very center, to go back to my analogy are the most necessary. But the ones that lie between the center of the web and the last outer strand are more necessary than the last outer strand. You can break the outer strand of the web and not break those inner ones or the most central ones. And so the web is a good analogy because it also has levels of necessity, if you will, or revisionary immunity within it. Everybody's way of thinking is organized in this way as a web. I hope I've taught you a lot today about philosophy, but if I haven't taught you everything that I wish this, I hope everybody will go away with it. Will help you immensely as a defender of the faith to know that the person you're talking to has a series of levels of revisionary immunity in his or her beliefs, that it's a system, it's integrated. And the thing that they will not give up until there's a change of system are the central beliefs. You can get changes on the outer periphery. You might even convince an unbeliever not to get an abortion. And you know, you can convince an unbeliever not to get an abortion without getting them to repent for their rebellion against God and turn their life around. Now, you all know that that's true intellectually too. You can get adjustments in the outer edges of the web. You can even get that naturalistic scientist to say, lo and behold, I guess Jesus rose from the dead. And yet you haven't got him to change his system of thought until you get him to change his presuppositions. So we learned that everybody's beliefs are tested in groups, in clusters. We don't test our beliefs one by one by one by one. Please turn the cassette over at this time. They're all tested in a context. And in that context or in that web, there are levels of revisionary immunity. And the thing that a person will not give up until they have a change of life, a change of outlook, is the center of the web. Everybody has truths which within their system of thinking are logically primitive. That's a technical expression. I'm not name calling here. Primitive here means at the lowest level, logically, in terms of the way it relates to other truths, it's logically primitive. It's not out there. It's not like I'm not risking anything to put out there that some other logically primitive truth can refute. Now, maybe you should stop and reflect on this overnight. In terms of what the Bible teaches us about unbelievers, what kinds of truths do they put in the center of the web. And they don't want to risk. What will they not put out there for reputation? What is it that's governing their whole way of looking at life that tells them what's rational and what's not, what's observationally acceptable and what's not? Well, I do want you to reflect on it. Dr. Van Till teaches us that the one thing the unbeliever does not want to give up is his autonomy. When all is said and done, he's the ultimate authority. This has devastating implications. That means some people can even accept God into their web, provided they stay at the center. God must always be subject to what they will think and what they're willing to do. Now they know better than to say, that may be, but in the function of their thinking and living, they remain autonomous and God stays not necessarily at the periphery, but God is still outside the center of the most precious, preserved, privileged, I guess, beliefs that they have now, for most people, since they're autonomous, that means God doesn't exist. Because they realize if God exists, how could I be autonomous? But it is possible for somebody to accept a God refashioned after their own imagination, who will not challenge their autonomy. It breaks my heart to ask you this. Are there people who profess to be Christians who treat the word of God in that way? They say, yeah, it's in the Bible. And I believe the Bible is God's word, but I can't believe that. Or if they're more sophisticated, they say, yes, it's in the Bible, but not everything in the Bible is God's word. Because after all, look, there's this thing that none of us can believe. The central sin of autonomy is at the center of the web, I think. And so when you bring evidence to the unbeliever, you can show him that Jesus rose from the dead and he wants to hold on to his autonomy. He might even accept that and say, yeah, that's not a miracle, because a miracle would mean God exists. And if God exists, then I'm not autonomous. Philosophically, if you've done a study of epistemology and the way in which people think, this is what you would come to as a conclusion. It's the same conclusion I came to yesterday, 24 hours ago. The Bible leads us to see that ultimately it's a question between the self attesting authority of Christ and the autonomy of man. And lo and behold, epistemologically, our study today has brought us to the same point of view. Everybody thinks in terms of worldviews Everybody grants privileged status to certain beliefs. And at the center of a person's worldview is the question of ultimate authority. That's what apologetics is all about, one ultimate authority. We're speaking for gods versus the ultimate authority of the would be autonomous man. We need to recognize that the autonomous man is not going to accept Christianity or the truths of the Bible on a one by one by one basis. He's going to have to accept the cluster. And to accept the cluster of beliefs means he's going to have to break the web. Now, I've been using this metaphor for a number of days. You know, what the Bible says doesn't have to use my metaphor. And I don't think I have to only use biblical ones. When I say he's got to break the web, that means he has to become a new man, he has to have a completely new outlook, he's got to have a change of mind, he's got to repent. And to repent means he says, I'm not the final authority God, you are. I'm just drawing this out. I think all of you have gotten the point. I'm drawing this out to show you that the best insights philosophically are exactly what we learn from the Bible, as well as to the nature of the apologetical situation. What's going on when we argue with unbelievers? Well, I would like to encourage you to pick up my paper because these implications for apologetics are laid out for you at greater lengths and given greater explanation than I'm able to do right now. As our time is quickly seeping away, I want to make two more points. Wow. Can I do this in just the time allowed? Let's see if this guy can name that tune. The next observation I would make as a philosopher, and I'm depending on all the stuff you've learned today, so I'm not going to repeat it, is that all worldviews are defended in a circular fashion. Everybody evaluates evidence within a worldview, and everyone reasons within a worldview. And the way in which we reason about our worldviews is always circular. In the history of philosophy, you have some philosophers who have been oriented toward permanence in what they think about the world and how we know what we know. And so they tend to see things as static and unchanging. Their focus is on the enduring qualities or aspects of their experience, and they tend to see things as discrete from one another. There's this orientation or attitude that says what's basically real is static, discrete. Other philosophers have said no, reality is basically dynamic in its orientation. They focus on the changing aspects of experience, and for them, everything shows an underlying continuity. And so they focus not on the discreteness of experience, but they focus rather on. On the differences between things as differences of degrees. Hume thought of the world in terms of a billiard table. Okay, Things are discrete from one another, and they tend to be the same. There's kind of a static orientation. Hegel, on the other part, on the other hand, saw the world in a dynamic, continuous way, more like a flower that is budding and blooming. Two different metaphors, Right? But the billiard ball metaphor says things are discrete from one another and have their enduring identity. The flower metaphor says everything's connected to everything else in one way or another, and everything is developing and working its way out. Now, if Hume and Hegel were to have a debate with one another, how would they debate with each other? Well, one of the things they do is they compare different theories of truth, and lo and behold, Hume would have had a correspondence theory of truth set over against the coherence theory of Hegel. See, Hegel saw all things as related to everything else. So it's coherence we ought to be concerned about. Hume said, no, everything's like billiard balls. So it's correspondence that we ought to be interested in. Hume would have said, our thinking occurs in minds which are discretely separated from one another. Hegel would have said, my thinking is mind, big M. Because thinking is taking place in all of our minds, which are all connected with one another in one way or another. Hume would have said of logic that there are two quite distinct categories. You have the unchanging category of the true and the unchanging category of the false. Hegel would have said, what an oversimplification. All truths are tentative and provisional. So they had different views of the world, different views of truth, different views of logic. Now, how rewarding will arguments be between schools that are separated in terms of their overall orientation? They're in conflict with each other in terms of what they emphasize, what they think is problematic, what they think is the proper approach to method and thinking. Arguments between Hume and Hegel would not have been over how well they did their homework, but over what kind of homework they should have been doing. Let me say that again. Arguments between Hume and Hegel would not have been over how well they did their homework, but over what kind of homework they should do. That is to say, what Hume thought were the problems to be solved were not problems or were not as much problematic for Hegel. The kind of analysis that you bring to things is different for Hegel than for Hume. What they take as their methods and their standards to be used is completely different. So how can these philosophical worldviews argue with each other? They tend to be inconclusive in the sense that you can't get one another to cry uncle. And when all is said and done, they tend to argue for themselves by assuming what they're arguing for. All worldviews are defended in a circular fashion. Somebody whose worldview, anybody who has the worldview that says everything we know, we know on the basis of observation, can be asked, and how do you know that? And in one form or another he's going to have to say, well, I know that by observation. Now I've already indicated earlier, I don't think he can make a go of it, but he's going to have to try to find some observational support for it, because if he doesn't, what has happened? He's given up his ultimate standard. All worldviews are defended in a circular fashion. There'll be people who say reason must be necessary because you have to use reason in order to deny reason. I happen to think that's a good argument, but notice what, it's a circular argument. You have to use reason in order to deny reason. But that's already assuming reason. However, it's reason that you're supposed to be arguing in favor or against. Circular argumentation at the worldview level is inevitable and acceptable. Is inevitable and acceptable. How many times do I have to say this? In the end, apologetics comes down to arguing the two circles. The circle of the unbelievers, point of view in philosophy or worldview in the circle of the Christian worldview. I don't forget that sometimes apologetical argument doesn't have to go that far. Sometimes you simply read the Bible versus somebody and they say, I want to become a Christian. Great, that's fine. But when you press back to in principle, the theoretical nature of the dispute, what I taught you today is it's dispute between worldviews that have different epistemologies and which are defended in a circular way. But I've also taught you something else in between, and that's that all non Christian worldviews break down. Their circles crumble. And that's what I'm getting at when I say that there is a rational, irrational tension in all non Christian worldviews in our waning moments here I'd like to give you a chart. If I had the time I was going to Put this on the board. But I'm going to save time. And I'll just use my hands to gesture for you. Right on this side, on that side. The chart that I'm sharing with you is a way for you to get a handle on the kinds of tensions that you find in worldviews. Worldviews will always have something that represents a rational pole in them. An attempt to make things intelligible, well ordered, unified, predictable, controlled, whatever. But they'll also have an irrational pole that allows for creativity and freedom, randomness, diversity rather than unity. Okay, so now you got to watch the hand motions, right? On this side, every worldview is going to have some view of how things are controlled, how they're ordered, how they're unified. On this side, every worldview will have some view of freedom, randomness and diversity. What's the problem? The problem is there's a conflict between order and diversity, control and freedom. If every WorldView has those two elements, then you want to exploit the conflict. The unbeliever. If you study his point of view, listen to him talk, will give you everything you need to hang him because he can't get away from having order. And yet he also has to grant diversity and randomness. Let's do this again. Every worldview has some kind of continuity and universality built into it. Continuity and universality. But on the other hand, every worldview has got to incorporate change in individuality as well. Change in individuality. On the side that's in favor of unity, order, control, continuity and universality. Every worldview must assert that man's mind is the ultimate interpreter, the final authority. The ultimate authority. Interpreter and final authority. It's rationalistic. Man's mind will be the final interpretation and authority. But on the other hand, every worldview that you run into will, in one way or another have to admit that a completely rational system of interpretation is impossible. Every worldview outside of Christianity says that man's mind is the ultimate interpreter. But in one way or another, admits man's mind isn't up to the task. There's some kind of mystery that surrounds everything. And so man's mind is not absolute. It's finite, and it's subject to error. Boy, this is a huge problem. The unbeliever wants to make his mind the ultimate authority. But he has to admit, my mind is not absolute. It's not infinite. It's finite, it's limited, and it's subject to error. Rationalism, but irrationalism. You know what unbelievers try to do? They try to mix These two together without anybody ever seeing what hand is doing in terms of the other hand. It's kind of like I want to hide from you that I know that my mind can't give you a completely rational scheme. What I want to tell you is my mind's the final authority. And then when you bring me all these conundrums in my point of view, I say, oh, did I say my mind was the ultimate authority? What I really wanted to say is no man's mind can ever rationally encompass everything. We're all finite. Right? To err is human. It's always one of these kind of things. And what do you want to do as an apologist then? Those listening to my tape don't know what I'm doing, right? You want to get both those hands out there together and say, look at that. This is not the sound of one hand clapping. This is both hands and whap. That won't work. You can't be the ultimate rational authority and then give up your rationality. You can't say that there's unity in all things and continuity, but then there's diversity and chance and randomness. On the one hand, a worldview will say nature is uniform and predictable. If it weren't uniform and predictable, we couldn't study it rationally. And then with the other hand, the unbeliever will say, there's personal dignity and freedom in us as human beings. So there is novelty and indeterminism. What do you want to do? Get the hands together. Is it determinism or indeterminism? Is it randomness or is everything predictable? If everything's predictable, your choices are predictable. They're not choices at all then, are they? They're not free. But if your choices are free, not everything's predictable. What's it going to be? Let me give an example from social theory. You'll have worldviews that say what's important is communal stability. Individuals must be subordinated to the stability of the society. There are ethical absolutes, after all. Notice, continuity, order, control on this side. And then people will say, we need to be free men who are not subject to any ultimate authority. Our society is doing this all the time. You know, the very same people that appear on talk shows that talk about I've got to be true to myself will also, as liberals tell us, that's why the state's got to dominate and not let the Rush Limbaugh speak and so forth. You know, it's not that I'm trying to defend Rush Limbaugh it's just that it's such an egregious example of contradiction. Everybody chooses good for himself. Isn't that right? We're told that. And yet the very same people will tell us. We need ethical absolutes, ethical absolutes that are based on what every man's opinion. What do you want to do in apologetics? Tomorrow is when we finally get into this, that that may be the day that you most have been looking forward to, although some of you look forward to Friday, the practice of it. We look at the various problems, but what we do in apologetics, if you listen today, is we've got to expose the underlying worldview of the unbeliever, recognize that he's going to defend it in a circular way, just as you are, and then go in there and really do a damage to his circle and say, this just won't hold together. You've got all these tensions here, so you really don't know what you're talking about. And if you don't know what you're talking about, if you've been reduced to foolishness, you have no basis for objecting to and challenging Christianity. In fact, your only hope for salvation, the intellectual challenge of the gospel. Your only hope for salvation is to turn your thinking over to the authority of God and be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. See you tomorrow. 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