Van Til on the Antithesis of Christian and anti-Christian Philosophy

The following excerpt from "My Credo" (in Jerusalem and Athens: Critical discussions on the theology and apologetics of Cornelius Van Til. 1971, E. R. Geehan, Ed. The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Nutley, NJ.) is Van Til's summary of the presuppositional apologetic.

Paragraphs B.4, C.4 and C.5 are a concise description of the approach of the transcendental argument.  Paragraph B.4.a is the positive argument ("The God of Christian theism is the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of all of human experience").  Paragraph B.4.b summarizes the negative argument (self destruction of anti-Christian philosophy, "Christian theism is true because of the impossibility of the contrary").   The outline also includes the summary of all anti-theistic philosophies:  they presuppose the dialectic of "regularity" (necessity) and "chance" and the antithetical presupposition of human autonomy¹.

---

***

"B. My understanding of the relationship between Christian and non-Christian, philosophically speaking.

1. Both have presuppositions about the nature of reality:

a. The Christian presupposes the triune God and his redemptive plan for the universe as set forth once for all in Scripture.
b. The non-Christian presupposes a dialectic between “chance” and “regularity,” the former accounting for the origin of matter and life, the latter accounting for the current success of the scientific enterprise.

2. Neither can, as finite beings, by means of logic as such, say what reality must be or cannot be.

a. The Christian, therefore, attempts to understand his world through the observation and logical ordering of facts in self-conscious subjection to the plan of the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. 

b. The non-Christian, while attempting an enterprise similar to the Christian’s, attempts nevertheless to use “logic” to destroy the Christian position. On the one hand, appealing to the non-rationality of “matter,” he says that the chance-character of “facts” is conclusive evidence against the Christian position. Then, on the other hand, he maintains like Parmenides that the Christian story cannot possibly be true. Man must be autonomous, “logic” must be legislative as to the field of “possibility” and possibility must be above God.

3. Both claim that their position is “in accordance with the facts.”

a. The Christian claims this because he interprets the facts and his experience in the light of the revelation of the self-attesting Christ in Scripture. Both the uniformity and the diversity of facts have at their foundation the all-embracing plan of God.
b. The non-Christian claims this because he interprets the facts and his experience in the light of the autonomy of human personality, the ultimate “givenness” of the world and the amenability of matter to mind. There can be no fact that denies man’s autonomy or attests to the world’s and man’s divine origin.

4. Both claim that their position is “rational.”

a. The Christian does so by claiming not only that his position is self-consistent but that he can explain both the seemingly “inexplicable” amenability of fact to logic and the necessity and usefulness of rationality itself in terms of Scripture.
b. The non-Christian may or may not make this same claim. If he does, the Christian maintains that he cannot make it good. If the non-Christian attempts to account for the amenability of fact to logic in terms of the ultimate rationality of the cosmos, then he will be crippled when it comes to explaining the “evolution” of men and things. If he attempts to do so in terms of pure “chance” and ultimate “irrationality” as being the well out of which both rational man and a rationally amenable world sprang, then we shall point out that such an explanation is in fact no explanation at all and that it destroys predication.

 C. My proposal, therefore, for a consistently Christian methodology of apologetics is this:

1. That we use the same principle in apologetics that we use in theology: the self-attesting, self-explanatory Christ of Scripture
2. That we no longer make an appeal to “common notions” which Christian and non-Christian agree on, but to the “common ground” which they actually have because man and his world are what Scripture says they are.
3. That we appeal to man as man, God’s image. We do so only if we set the non-Christian principle of the rational autonomy of man against the Christian principle of the dependence of man’s knowledge on God’s knowledge as revealed in the person and by the Spirit of Christ.
4. That we claim, therefore, that Christianity alone is reasonable for men to hold. It is wholly irrational to hold any other position than that of Christianity. Christianity alone does not slay reason on the altar of “chance.”
5. That we argue, therefore, by “presupposition.” The Christian, as did Tertullian, must contest the very principles of his opponent’s position. The only “proof” of the Christian position is that unless its truth is presupposed there is no possibility of “proving” anything at all. The actual state of affairs as preached by Christianity is the necessary foundation of “proof” itself.
6. That we preach with the understanding that the acceptance of the Christ of Scripture by sinners who, being alienated from God, seek to flee his face, comes about when the Holy Spirit, in the presence of inescapably clear evidence, opens their eyes so that they see things as they truly are.
7. That we present the message and evidence for the Christian position as clearly as possible, knowing that because man is what the Christian says he is, the non-Christian will be able to understand in an intellectual sense the issues involved. In so doing, we shall, to a large extent, be telling him what he “already knows” but seeks to suppress. This “reminding” process provides a fertile ground for the Holy Spirit, who in sovereign grace may grant the non-Christian repentance so that he may know him who is life eternal."

---

1 The atheist "robots," such as Rosenberg, Provine and Harris, deny human autonomy but inconsistently claim rationality and possession of "truth." In other words, they assert that it is true that they are devoid of free agency (i.e. "robots." cf. Invasion of the Atheist Robots) yet claim this conclusion is rationally and logically derived.^↩

Invasion of the Atheist Robots, Part II

In my previous blog posting regarding the logical consequences of material monism, I showed that it is self-contradictory because it asserts that all of human experience is merely the compelled effects of the physical properties of matter.  I also mentioned my latest discovery in the blogosphere of Sam Harris' assertion that he is a robot -- a mindless automaton of the universe.  But there are more.

A second example of an atheist robot is found in the writings of Stephen Hawking.    A material monist, such as Hawking,  believes there are no "minds," just physical brains.  So then, it is no surprise, when in the following link, (Hawking: There is No Heaven), Hawking declares that we are merely "meat computers," i.e., we are just like our familiar desktop computers, except that our brains are composed of meat rather than silicon.

To my knowledge, Hawking has not disavowed man's free agency, though he openly sacrifices his rationality on the altar of the goddess Tyche ("chance").  Hawking states in the above article, "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in."

Science predicts no such thing.

We have already pointed out previously (here) that the "nothing" of Hawking is most definitely something. It is a configuration of quantum fields (which is something) that have a total energy balance of zero -- but to say that a configuration of matter with zero energy (and even the reference point for zero energy is conventional) is "nothing" would be akin to saying the assets of a person with net worth zero is "nothing" in spite of the fact that it is merely that the value of his many assets is equal to the amount of his debts.  It is remarkable what nonsense such brilliant men will utter!

Then we also have Hawking's appeal to "chance."  "Chance," of course, is the correlate of lawlessness, the unexplained, or stuff from the surd.  As it turns out, no physical experiment has shown the existence of "chance."    Atheists worship it nonetheless.   Be that as it may, if it were "chance" that decided in which universe Hawking found himself, it is also "chance" that dictates his every action -- Hawking can have no waivers.  It would follow that Hawking's "reasoning" itself would be the result of random events dictated by quantum dynamics.   He would not be a "free thinker"-- as many atheists tout -- but a mindless robot uttering random propositions dictated by lawless "chance."  So much then for Hawking's rationality and denial of God.

The same analysis applies to all self-contradictory freedom-denying atheist "robots."  On the atheist worldview, there is no transcendent reality -- the material universe is all there is.  In this case, man is nothing more than a part of the material universe and thus totally governed by material laws. Mindless matter grants no waivers. 

In Christianity, on the other hand, there is an ultimate reality that transcends the world -- the Transcendent Triune God.  Only on the presupposition of theism is man free from physical determinism, since he is the creation of a transcendent living Triune God who has created the physical world and has created man with a nature that is not totally physical -- but physical and spiritual.   Man's created spirit is not ruled by material laws and his will is independent of those laws.   It is the seat of rationality, of self, and of the will.  Christian theism is the only worldview that accounts for all of human experience, that breaks the shackles of material monism, and accounts for the rationality of man.

Invasion of the Atheist Robots

In recent postings, I have written on the logical consequences of material monism.  Material monism is self-contradictory -- it asserts that all of human experience is merely the compelled effects of the physical properties of matter.  But this is the same as the assertion that things turn into their opposites -- by way of magic.  Examples are: life from lifeless matter, minds from mindlessness, logic and mathematics from a-logical and a-mathematical matter, and morals from amoral matter.  And for some, freedom emerges from physical compulsion.

There are two types of these "rational" monists.

The first type of monist  (of which Richard Dawkins is an example), is one who asserts that he is free. We have dealt with that conceit here.  The other group (of which William Provine is an example, discussed here) follows the logical consistency of their presuppositions, reject the miracle of Dawkins, and deny that they are free.  This follows easily, since once a mechanism. . .always a mechanism.  Thus, they use their rationality to deny their freedom, and so deny their own rationality.  In short, they use rationality to deny rationality!

In perusing the blogosphere, it appears that the ranks of atheists promoting man as a mere robot without freedom from physical determinism are swelling.

The newest self-proclaimed robot I have discovered is Sam Harris.  Harris's rejections can be found here:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free-will-why-you-still-dont-have-it/
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/morality-without-free-will/

In both of those essays,  Harris supposes he is engaging in a rational argument. . .but one compelled by physics!  Remarkable!  In the second article above, Harris argues for morality compelled by physics!  Yet another absurd miracle!  To say that a purely material system (such as Harris in Harris's atheistic materialism) is logically and morally obligated to act a certain way is absurd.  Matter is only "obliged" to act according to physical laws. Because of this, robots cannot exhibit moral or rational acts.  Nonetheless, Harris asserts that he is a robot.  And all of this is arrived at via a viciously circular argument rooted in the metaphysical bias of material monism.

A particularly muddled remark occurs at the end of the first article, viz., "the illusion of free will is itself an illusion." 

Here by Harris's analysis, we have a supposedly rational conclusion which is itself an illusion compelled by physics.  But what could it mean?  If the illusion is an illusion, then on the normal meaning of the word "illusion," the "false appearance of free will" is itself a false appearance -- normal usage would either take Harris as contradicting himself or suggesting a rather nonsensical infinite regress of illusions. He has committed a faux pas -- perhaps though (in analogy with his illusion illusion), he would prefer he had committed a faux faux pas.


The issue of human freedom from physical causation extends deeper than ethical issues, such as the repudiation of moral choices and human responsibility. Even Searle in Rationality in Action has written, inconsistently with his naturalism, that rationality presupposes free will.  To state it briefly: Naturalism cannot even account for the illusion of rationality, as there would be no “reason.” Yet, Harris expects us to rationally follow his reasoning -- or maybe he doesn't.  Could it be that Harris is not the author, but rather a mindless robot?

But such is the absurdity to which atheism descends -- rather than worshiping their Creator, they worship "omnipotent" matter by way of their prideful faith in the "rationality" of  "omnipotent" science. A rationality and science which is inexplicable in a purely material reality.

Romans 1:18-19  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,  because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

Romans 1:25  For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.