The Apologetic Situation: Claims to Knowledge

In an apologetic debate, the situation is not that both unbeliever and believer have shared epistemological standards, and that we are just to argue from supposed brute facts to a "best" or "probable" conclusion concerning the existence of God.  But, sadly, this is the typical approach used by Christian evidentialists in their approach to apologetics.  In so arguing, they have adopted the unbeliever's non-self-verifying standards and have adopted an antitheistic presupposition.  They have reduced themselves to the skeptical position of the unbeliever in which there is no certain knowledge of anything.

To be sure, there is a purely formal agreement between belief and unbelief regarding deduction, induction, and the scientific method -- but the similarity ends there.   The disagreement is over the nature, source, and authority of these. The unbeliever has no justification for his principles of deduction or induction or why the scientific method works.   They are all merely assumed in his worldview.  They are also epistemological presuppositions that do not comport with his espoused metaphysics (e.g., how immaterial, abstract, unchanging laws of thought arise out of ever-changing material in flux.).  The unbeliever can provide no reason for reason.

For instance, the unbeliever must assume the future will be like the past (uniformity of nature) in order for induction to proceed, but he has no proof of such.  It is not a necessary truth, it cannot be deduced or demonstrated.  Induction itself cannot be invoked to support induction.  It is a circular argument.  Past and present evidence provides no basis for extrapolation to the future.  The only appeal is "so far, so good."   It is a faith commitment.  Hume's skeptical argument regarding induction remains unanswered.  Further, the unbeliever cannot even assign a probability to the uniformity of nature.  That would require him to know everything -- to have been everywhere for all time -- to be God.

The same problem exists with causation. Causation (continued necessary conjunction of causes and effects) itself assumes the uniformity of nature. This is a faith commitment.  Unbelievers of a superficial scientific bent (which is the majority of unbelievers in this modern age of technology) have repeatedly said things of the sort: nature appears to be orderly, let's assume it's so. 

Let's not.  As Christians we do not.  To assume this in vacuo is to assume the atheist presupposition that the material universe is the totality of reality -- self-existent with eternal inherent properties.  This is the atheist's circular (and self-contradictory) faith commitment.  The morally culpable unbeliever worships the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25).   But, the universe is not the totality of reality, it is not self-existent, and the idea of eternal physical matter is self-contradictory. 

According to modern physics, the world is not quite as orderly as the scientifically naive say.  The modern view of naturalistic science is that reality is a combination of both law (supposed invariant properties of matter) and lawlessness (irreducible and unknowable chance, i.e., metaphysical irrationalism).  On this basis, the claim that nature is uniform is completely undermined since what occurs is, in fact, given by ultimate lawlessness (lack of causality) filtered through inexplicable law-like patterns (properties of matter).  Some even assert that the laws themselves are also "flukes" and not necessarily invariant (e.g., John A. Wheeler's remark: "The only law is the law that there is no law," quoted in James Gleick, Genius: the Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1993), p.93).  The unbeliever doesn't even know if additional undiscovered forces are "lurking in the unknown mysterious universe," only to be triggered by some catastrophic uncaused random event.   In any case, the unbeliever, in the face of such, is devoid of knowledge.    He cannot even claim he has a mind engaged in volitional reasoning.  Whatever physical processes are occurring in his physical brain are also lawless random events filtered through a maze of patterns.  His brain is nothing more than a quantum mechanical pachinko machine, in which every "thought" is nothing more than random effects -- the clatter of random motions of pachinko balls.  There is nothing in those random processes that can be called a "mind" or the free exercise of "reason."  There is nothing in his brain that corresponds to a self that is making arguments and logical choices.  Yet, in the face of such analysis, the unbeliever asserts his freedom (autonomy) and personality, and holds that rationality is accounted for by the (nonexistent) mind of man -- not the mind of God.  The unbeliever then presumes to argue against Christ by way of his (nonexistent in his worldview) "autonomous reason."    An incredible example was Christopher Hitchens: "Nonetheless, here I am reasoning."  [Hitchens-Wilson interview Imus in the Morning.]  It is in the light of such evidence (atheists actually arguing against Christianity) that Bahnsen remarks that "if naturalism is true, the naturalist has no reason to believe it" and that the atheist has already lost the debate by showing up at the debate.  That is:  The unbeliever's worldview is self-contradictory and his actions do not comport with his metaphysical presuppositions.

So then, the unbeliever cannot account for and neither does he know these things (induction, uniformity of nature), and since he has no knowledge of them, anything derived from them is not knowledge.  Therefore, with no knowledge, there is no certain foundation from which he can conduct a case to judge any fact or prove anything.   In short, nothing in the unbeliever's worldview yields certain knowledge of the external world.  And with that goes the claim of scientism: "only science yields knowledge."  A claim that, we have mentioned before, is itself not a scientific truth, since it is neither deducible nor empirically observed.  Thus, not being science, the claim declares itself to be not known.

The Christian does have justification for each of the above (deduction, induction, the uniformity of nature) in the absolute transcendent God, the eternal Sovereign Creator of the cosmos.

God has created man in His image with volition and a mind that has the capacity to think rationally according to the abstract laws of thought ("logic").  These laws of logic as constituted in man are a reflection of God's thoughts.  

The law of induction works because God is the author of physical causation and the uniformity of nature, and according to his unchanging character, He maintains the creation; the laws he has created will be the same tomorrow as they are today and were yesterday.  Only on the presupposition of the absolute personal God revealed in the Bible can a scientist make the claim to knowledge.  Only on the basis of Christianity is there knowledge, and that knowledge is rooted in the certain knowledge of God.

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. (Colossians 1:16-17)

God...  hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;  (Hebrews 1:1-3)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  2 The same was in the beginning with God.  3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3)

So then, the unbeliever, in sinful rebellion, takes himself as the final authority and presumes to explain reality by means of his own merely assumed and inexplicable non-self-verifying principles.   He rejects God's revelation surrounding him and within him by his assumed incoherent philosophy of necessity, chance, and his own autonomy.  As his own final authority, he asserts his freedom and personality. He presumes to interpret himself, his existence (as uncreated by God), and the facts of a godless and impersonal random universe (of which he, too, is just a random fact).   He falsely takes himself as an innocent truth seeker and in no need of a Redeemer.  Christians believe none of that.  Our final authority is the self-attesting and self-authorizing absolute God who is the Creator of man and the cosmos; it is in terms of God's revelation in the Bible and in nature that we interpret ourselves and the cosmos.    From that we have the assured basis of true knowledge, human reason, deduction, induction, and the scientific method.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. The self-destruction of material monism.

A few weeks ago, I was contemplating why there are no atheist works on "systematic atheology"  (at least I was unaware of any.)  After all, there are many Christian works on systematic theology that lay out the basis and scope of Christian beliefs.   My interest in such a "systematic atheology" was that, should such a work appear, the self-contradictory nature of atheism would be laid bare -- straight from the horse's mouth. 

As it turns out, there has been an attempt, of sorts, in The Atheist's Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg.  The book lays out the hard-line implications of his particular denomination of atheism: material monism (matter is all there is) with scientism as his epistemological article of faith. Many of the absurdities of atheism are exposed to the light of day.   (And there is a final absurdity that Rosenberg says implicitly, but does not utter, which we will examine below.)  Some of the conclusions that follow from material monism (" a godless material reality" in which the only causation is physical causation) and which Dr. Rosenberg fully embraces are: 

• The only kind of  'mind' is a brain.
• There is no 'free will.' We are all robots moving according to the physical properties of matter.
• There are no objective morals of any sort.  Right, wrong, good and bad, they are all the same.

As Christians, we must say 'bravo' to Dr. Rosenberg!  If physics fixes everything then the above conclusions would be true.  His book is a brilliant self-refutation of atheistic material monism using its own presuppositions. . .and, thus, is TAG (Transcendental Argument for God) in brilliant display.

Dr. Rosenberg takes us down the same path on the implications of material monism that prominent presuppositional apologists Dr. Cornelius Van Til, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, and others have marked out before.   As well, some similar analysis has been posted in this blog.

Dr. James N. Anderson writes in his review of this book: 

"Christian philosophers have been developing and refining arguments for the existence of God since the earliest times, but it’s not often one comes across a convinced atheist making a powerful philosophical case for the existence of God. Yet that’s precisely what we find—quite contrary to the author’s intent—in Alex Rosenberg’s book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality."

Anderson's insightful review can be read at his blog.

I will add just a few observations.  A central tenet of presuppositional apologetics is that all non-Christian philosophical systems of thought (worldviews) are contradictory and reduce to absurdity, which Anderson discusses.  The coup de grace delivered by presuppositional apologetics is that non-Christian worldviews, when examined solely on the basis of their presuppositions, lead to the destruction of truth and knowledge.

Rosenberg's book promotes the conviction that only science leads to truth ("scientism").  He preaches with fervor the "truth" that everything consists of collections of fermions and bosons.  This is a scientific "truth."  Everything that is, or happens, is the result of laws of physics (properties of matter).  But then he asserts, after many chapters:

"Look, if I am going to get scientism into your skull, I have to use the only tools we've got for moving information from one head to another: noises, ink-marks, pixels.  Treat the illusion that goes with them like the optical illusions in Chapter 7.  This book isn't conveying statements.  It's rearranging neural circuits, removing inaccurate disinformation and replacing it with accurate information.  Treat it as correcting maps instead of erasing sentences." (p. 193. emph. added).

There are many falsehoods in that paragraph -- almost as many as there are words. (See Anderson's review, and his remarks on intentionality and aboutness.)   But the final epistemological suicide of material monism lies in these words: "This book isn't conveying statements."  And that is a really strange and fatal statement.  Here's why: statements (or propositions) are the carriers of truth value, which, from the implications of material monism, his book does not contain. . . a conclusion of material monism with which we wholeheartedly agree.

So then, Rosenberg has told us that his book contains no capacity to convey truth or knowledge (and that applies, as well, to: "This book isn't conveying statements.").  This is futility and the destruction of knowledge.  Nonetheless, Rosenberg tells us that "scientism" yields "truth," when by his own mouth he implies it doesn't.  Rosenberg's false metaphysics (material monism) supplies no basis for Rosenberg's false epistemology (scientism).

If material monism were true, then it would be false.  It is, therefore, false.

And that is the end of the matter.

Heideggerian Nonsense. Asking the Wrong Questions Revisited.

In a discussion over the certain existence of the Christian God, an interlocutor, who admitted that his position had been poked full of holes (a refreshingly honest response), attempted the diversion: "Rather than asking about the existence of God, one should ask why there is something rather than nothing."  This is sheer desperation and atheism unadulterated.

That question is Heidegger's famous question (or pseudo-question).

As Michael Inwood has written in his book Heidegger: A Very Short Introduction, depending on whom you ask, 

 "He [Heidegger] was (with the possible exception of Wittgenstein) the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.  He was (with the possible exception of Hegel) the greatest charlatan ever to claim the title of 'philosopher', a master of hollow verbiage masquerading as profundity."

To ask Heidegger's question (a prejudicial question that, in itself, presupposes a reality of pure contingency) is to deny it.  To ask "why . . . rather than . . ." is to ask for a causal agency, and such a causal agent is then itself "something." The question is meaningless and self-contradictory, pure and simple -- empty verbiage masquerading as profundity.  The venerable maxim "Ex nihilo nihil fit"¹ has no exceptions.   Heidegger was a charlatan.

So then:  The issue is not that there is "something"; the issue is the nature of that eternal and ultimate "something."  Both sides in the debate have an ultimate. The ultimate "something" of atheism of the material monist variety is eternal impersonal matter ².   Material monism explains nothing.  This worldview of a "godless material universe" is self contradictory (e.g., eternal matter is incoherent as discussed here), and further, it cannot account for immaterial abstract entities such as logic, absolute morality, minds, human free agency, or rationality. . .none of which can emerge from mere "matter in motion."

There are also the atheists of the pluralist sort, those who merely posit a plurality of eternal, incoherent co-ultimates.  This incoherent reality is populated with such things as realms of abstract logic and abstract moral laws, chance, matter, minds, space-time, and a whole host of other brute facts.  This is, essentially, atheistic Platonism.  This incoherent philosophy explains nothing, as well as violates the principle of Ockham's razor, of which most atheists are very fond -- unless it applies to them.  These Platonic brute-fact worlds of the pluralist interact magically via Platonic mysteries!   These are even more brute facts.  This is a great deal of question begging.  We will deal with this version of atheism in a future essay.

All varieties of atheism contradict themselves and resort to question-begging presuppositions and special pleading.  They end in futility and destroy the possibility of knowledge.  So then, we know God exists because of the impossibility of the contrary (transcendental argument or apagogical argument via internal critique).  Since atheism, on its own presuppositions and its epistemological "standard," is self-refuting, there is a God.

In Christian theism, ultimate reality is the personal Triune God who is the Creator and who sustains the universe.  He is the source of all life, morality, rationality and the whole of creation.  Again, it is ONLY Christian theism which is consistent and provides the foundations for all of human experience.

---

1 Out of Nothing Comes Nothing.^↩
2 The term "monism" is actually a verbal ruse, which I plan to address in a future blog post.^↩

Varieties of Anti-theism

In the not too distant past, my favorite agnostic asserted strongly that he was not an anti-theist.  In the context of the discussion, I knew he was talking of militant atheists, such as Dawkins, Hitchens, et al., and that he was not of their ilk.

That definition of anti-theism is very narrow.  My preference is to refer to Dawkins as a "militant atheist," and reserve anti-theism for any position or thought that stands in opposition ("anti") to theism.   That is how I have used the word in my essays.

For a comprehensive survey of "anti-theism" refer to this wikipedia entry, particularly the section titled, "Opposition to the idea of God."   There, the Chambers Dictionary defines anti-theism as:  "1. doctrine antagonistic to theism; 2. 'denial' of the existence of a God; 3. opposition to God."

Within the broader definition of anti-theism in the first definition, agnosticism and even some religious positions/postures are anti-theistic.

A particular case of the latter is the concession to the "myth of neutrality" on the part of Christian "evidentialist" apologists who debate atheists on the supposed "neutral" ground of "reason" in an attempt to "reason" to a probable God.  However, to debate in that way is to presuppose that reason exists in a possibly godless reality -- that presupposition is anti-theistic.  By adopting the epistemological standards of the unbeliever, the evidentialist violates Prov. 26:4, "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him."

Here is the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen's discussion of the "myth of neutrality":

[Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic Readings and Analysis, p. 146.]

"... the epistemological disagreements between believers and unbelievers [can] not be resolved in a neutral fashion, as though the issue of God's existence and character ... [can] be treated as secondary ­ and thus temporarily set aside without any commitment one way or another ­ while abstract philosophical issues [are] debated and settled. It is often, but vainly, imagined that once we come to agreement on our epistemology, we can apply those epistemological standards to the questions of whether God exists, whether miracles occur, whether the Bible is true, etc. By contrast, Van Til taught that abstract epistemological neutrality is an illusion and that, given the kind of God revealed in the bible, imagined neutrality is actually prejudicial against God.

"If God exists and is as the Christian world view claims, then His existence has an undeniable bearing on how we understand the process of knowing, the standards of truth and evidence, ultimate authority, and other crucial matters in epistemology.

"There is no pristine, religiously neutral, abstract 'reason' to which all men first swear their allegiance, only then to turn to such secondary matters as man's nature, moral character, relation to God, destiny, etc. The kind of man who is doing the reasoning already determines something about the way in which he thinks about reason and engages in reasoning. Thus Van Til stated, 'It is impossible to speak of the intellect per se, without taking into consideration whether it is the intellect of a regenerated person or of a non-regenerated person.'

"Van Til simply called for honesty and realism here. The metaphysical situation and object of knowledge (e.g., God's existence, the relation of created things to Him), as well as the psychological/moral situation and the subject of knowledge (i.e., man as a knower, someone using reasoning ability), cannot be ignored as we develop our views of knowing. 'Reason' is simply an intellectual tool, rather than an ultimate standard of knowledge (more authoritative even than God), and as such will be affected by the regenerate or unregenerate condition of the man using it. A person's epistemological behavior and commitments are ethical in character. According to Van Til, one's theory of knowledge is not neutral, but subject to moral assessment in terms of the ultimate authority to which one submits and which one attempts to honor."

Pride and Prejudice - The Sins of Dogmatic Agnosticism

Recently, I was surprised in a conversation when an agnostic suggested that I may be suffering from the "sin of pride" in regard to my knowledge of and certain proof of the existence of God.  He expressed it something like this: "You seem to have all the answers."  The agnostic also remarked that he was more likely to listen to someone if he were more modest or humble in his assertions.  Now, I wonder if he would entertain such an attitude toward an accountant keeping track of his money.  This is an example of the agnostic's false prejudice.  He thinks that science yields knowledge --  nothing else does.  Of course, this prejudice is neither a tautology nor an empirical fact, so it is not scientific and hence, to the agnostic, not knowledge.  But it is his article of faith; totally subjective -- pure and unalloyed.

My friend's remarks betray the inconsistent and self-refuting presuppositions of dogmatic agnosticism - founded on human pride and prejudice.

The agnostic's axiom of faith (yes, agnosticism is irrational fideism) is that in the religious realm there is no truth --  or if there is, it cannot be known.  A corollary of this is that God - if there be one - is incapable of revealing himself or that he has done so incompetently (the usual and erroneous complaint is that there are contradictions in the Bible) -- and thus cannot be known.  

Agnosticism itself is a religious stance, and thus the agnostic declares his own agnosticism to be not a fact of knowledge.  He is thus a fideist, even though he maintains his agnosticism on supposed "facts."  He operates on these "facts" using the machinery of logic and the scientific method -- two abstract principles which he cannot account for or justify on his own presuppositions.  This makes him an irrationalist, too.  But such is the religion of "scientism"  that boasts of its rationality and reason!

The end result of all this is that the agnostic's skeptical religion has already made big claims about reality.   That is the prejudice.  As Cornelius Van Til has written:

". . . the point we should be most anxious to drive home is that in trying to be agnostic, and in trying to say that they have no need of metaphysics, they have already given one of the two possible answers to every question of epistemology that may be asked. They have, as a matter of fact, said that all the facts . . .  exist apart from God and are able to get along without God. They think they have said nothing at all about ultimate matters, while as a matter of fact they have in effect said everything that could be said about them, and, we believe, more beside. They have tried to be so modest that they did not dare to make a positive statement about anything ultimate, while they have made a universal negative statement about the most ultimate consideration that faces the mind of man. " (Van Til, A Survey Of Christian Epistemology) .

And as to the agnostic's supposed "humbleness" Van Til continues:

"Incidentally, we may point out that, in addition to being psychologically and epistemologically self-contradictory, the agnostic is morally self-contradictory. His contention was that he is very humble, and for that reason unwilling to pretend to know anything about ultimate matters. Yet he has by implication made a universal statement about reality. He therefore not only claims to know as much as the theist knows, but he claims to know much more. More than that, he not only claims to know much more than the theist, but he claims to know more than the theist’s God. He has boldly set bare possibility above the theist’s God and is quite willing to test the consequences of his action. It is thus that the hubris of which the Greeks spoke so much, and upon which they invoked the wrath of the gods, appears in new and seeming innocent garb."   (Van Til,  A Survey of Christian Epistemology).

Such is the agnostic's pride.

To the agnostic, it is the impersonal "unknown" that has endowed him with autonomy, thought and rationality and set him on the sovereign throne as the ultimate arbiter of everything.   Man is the measure of all things.  No matter that such things as thought and rationality would not exist in a godless reality.  The agnostic's stance is that he is the center of all things -- whether there be a God or not.   As C.S. Lewis summarized, pride is ". . . the complete anti-God state of mind." (Mere Christianity)

So, contrary to my friend's charge that the Christian who claims certitude and knowledge of God is guilty of pride, it is my friend who is guilty of pride.  In fact, his charge is absurd since God tells us that such knowledge is certain -- and God is the judge of what is pride, not the agnostic's subjective and arbitrary pronouncement.  The agnostic has no basis for the charge, nor does he realize that his charge of "sin" presupposes God.  The agnostic's charge of pride  -- having no moral justification and basis for the existence of sin -- is self-refuting and futile. 

But then. .  . all anti-theistic thought is self-contradictory and futile.


Proverbs 16:18  18 Pride goes before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5  3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:  4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)  5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

The Impossible Hour Glass (and other impossibilities)

Though a critic of presuppositional apologetics (for very wrong reasons discussed here), Christian apologist William Lane Craig has recognized the power of transcendental arguments.  Craig has been employing the Kalam cosmological argument for a number of years, which can be formulated transcendentally, thus: the physical impossibility of an infinite physical past implies a non-physical, supernatural transcendent cause of time.  In Christian Theism the cause is the eternal and personal Triune God who created the universe.

A weakness of Craig's approach is that he allows the argument to get sidetracked on what are irrelevant discussions of abstract mathematical time (with all sorts of atheist Platonistic presuppositions), when the issue only concerns physical time. 

These issues are discussed in the book, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology,  a debate between Craig and atheist Quentin Smith.  Quentin Smith’s rejoinder to Craig was to appeal to mathematical concepts – in fact, amazingly, he essentially asserts Cantorian set theory is somehow normative of physical time.

Arguing for infinite physical time using abstract mental mathematical constructions is a non sequitur.  What man can imagine has no probative force on reality – particularly physical reality.  So then, since for a material monist, physical “stuff”  is the only thing that exists, formulating the argument in terms of physical time is all that is required.  After all, physical time is part of the “real stuff” out of which all else must emerge.  The fact that human brains can conceive of Cantorian set theory has no more relevance to the discussion than the concept of unicorns has to equine biology.  J.P. Moreland is close to what I am to present with the following physical gedanken experiment ("thought experiment").     Please, concentrate as you read and put on your "thinking caps" for this "thought experiment."

Consider an ordinary hourglass.  Being a physical instrument, this is a direct correspondent to physical time.       

Consider the grains of sand as physical events.  The  throat of the hour glass is the present instant of time or "now."   The sand in the throat, of course, is measuring the transpiring events -- the events being "actualized."  The sand in the bottom and top chambers is, respectively, past and future events.  All of the sand in the bottom represents actualized events.  The sand in the top represents the events to come but not yet actualized.

Of course any humanly constructed hourglass has finite sand.  But now, consider an hourglass with an infinite top globe.   The sand in the top being the yet future events.  There will always be future events (if one wants to object and make the top finite, i.e., physical time exhaustible, then the argument is already conceded).  There will never be an instant when all of the sand has passed through the throat, and this is due to the fact that future events are never totally actualized.

The sand in the bottom of the glass, of course, is the collection of actualized events.  Which brings us to the point.

Now let us suppose that there is an infinite amount of sand in the bottom.  The sand then represents an infinite sequence of actualized events.  And this is the situation that atheists, such as Smith, claim is both possible and what is actually the case, based on abstract mathematics.  But this is physically impossible for the following reason.

If we would flip the hourglass, we still have an hourglass with infinite sand in the top and bottom – only that the past has been interchanged with the future.  And just as the future before the flip was inexhaustible, so then the past that is now at the top will be inexhaustible -- all of the sand granules will never make it to the bottom.  They will never be re-actualized.  Yet those who assert the existence of an  infinite physical past, such as Smith, et al., claim that the past sand did in fact pass through the throat -- that they had been actualized.  This is impossible by the symmetry of the case.  The un-actualized and inexhaustible infinite future physical time precludes the existence of an actualized and exhausted infinite physical past.  So then, just as infinite future physical time is not exhaustible and cannot be totally actualized , a past infinite actualized physical time is likewise impossible.  This argument is based solely on pure physical principles, and thus physicalism itself is incompatible with the eternity of past physical time that the atheist asserts.  This completes the reductio ad absurdum. The past eternity of physical time and a material universe is impossible, and once again we see the self-refuting presuppositions of atheist physical materialism.

Addendum.  Perhaps another argument will appeal more to fans of science fiction. That is to recast the argument into a time travel thought experiment. (The attentive reader has probably already noted that the argument above, in which past and future were flipped, is already a type of  “time travel.” )         

For the time travel argument, suppose we have constructed a physical time machine (in a physicalist’s purely material universe, what other kind can there be?  No Platonic mathematics allowed!)  We can use our machine to travel forward or backward in time.  We get in and press “forward!”  As in H.G. Wells' classic “The Time Machine” we watch the future of the universe unfold in fast forward. We accelerate – faster and faster.  But no matter how fast we travel, we never exhaust the future.  Now we decide to go backward in time.  Again, we press “reverse” and accelerate faster and faster.  Still, even as we accelerate faster and faster, just as we would never experience all of the events of the future, we will never reach all of the events of the supposed infinite past.  Yet, we are a physical temporal process actualizing or experiencing events in reverse order at a rate exceedingly surpassing the actual rate at which they were supposedly first actualized.  This is contradictory. The supposed physically actualized infinite temporal past of the atheist is impossible.  An eternal physical universe in physical time is impossible.  The source of natural time thus requires a supernatural Creator who transcends physical time.  The Creator must be volitional to choose to create the physical temporal universe and thereby He is personal. Only a personal eternal creator can be the source of physical time.

Postscript.

At the risk of multiplying examples, as a nod to the Academy Award-winning photography in George Pal's 1961 "The Time Machine," I'll add the the "Impossible Motion Picture Camera." 

For this example, imagine a motion picture camera that is recording some small patch of the universe.  The camera records all events that have been actualized in that patch of the universe -- by construction this an infinite sequence of physically actualized events.  However, if we play the purported film in reverse, even at arbitrarily large reverse speeds,  2x, 4x, 32x . . ., we can never re-actualize the recorded supposedly actualized events.  Again reaching a reductio ad absurdum.  Thus, the purported camera and the infinite physical past do not exist.   The conclusion is the same.  An infinite physical past is impossible.  Only a personal transcendent eternal Creator can be the source of physical time.

P.S. By the way, there is no such thing as a time machine!

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.