Tough Questions Answered

Posted By Bill Pratt on May 15, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

The citizens of North Carolina voted, last Tuesday, 61% to 39% in favor of adding an amendment to the state constitution that re-affirms the traditional view of marriage between one man and one woman.  Even though this was an overwhelming victory, it still saddens me that so many people in our state have failed to understand what is at stake in this debate.

As I’ve researched this issue for the last several years I have read numerous excellent treatments on marriage.  Recently, though, I discovered, thanks to the Manhattan Project, the best concise, scholarly treatment I’ve ever read on marriage.  The article is entitled “What Is Marriage?” and it was originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.  The authors are Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan T. Anderson.

Below is the table of contents, to give you an idea of the ground that the authors cover in the paper:

I. ……………………………………………………………………..248

A. Equality, Justice, and the Heart of the Debate …………………………………………..248

B. Real Marriage Is—And Is Only—The Union of Husband and Wife…………………..252

1. Comprehensive Union ………………………253
2. Special Link to Children ……………………255
3. Marital Norms…………………………………..259

C. How Would Gay Civil Marriage Affect You or Your Marriage? ………………..260

1. Weakening Marriage …………………………260
2. Obscuring the Value of Opposite‐Sex Parenting As an Ideal ………………………..262
3. Threatening Moral and Religious Freedom ……………………………………………263

D. If Not Same‐Sex Couples, Why Infertile Ones? ………………………………..265

1. Still Real Marriages……………………………266
2. Still in the Public Interest…………………..268

E. Challenges for Revisionists ……………………..269

1. The State Has an Interest in Regulating Some Relationships? ……….269
2. Only if They Are Romantic?………………271
3. Only if They Are Monogamous? ……….272

F. Isn’t Marriage Just Whatever We Say It Is? ……………………………………………274

II . …………………………………………………………………….275

A. Why Not Spread Traditional Norms to the Gay Community? ………………………….275

B. What About Partners’ Concrete Needs? ……………………………………..280

C. Doesn’t the Conjugal Conception of Marriage Sacrifice Some People’s Fulfillment for Others’? …………….281

D. Isn’t It Only Natural? ………………………………284

E. Doesn’t Traditional Marriage Law Impose Controversial Moral and Religious Views on Everyone? …………………………………………..285

CONCLUSION……………………………………………………….286

 When you click on the link to the article, it will take you to the abstract.  All you have to do to get the complete article is click on the “Download This Paper” link on the same web page.  In order to entice you to read the whole paper, I quote the conclusion of the paper below: 

A thought experiment might crystallize our central argument.  Almost every culture in every time and place has had some institution that resembles what we know as marriage. But imagine that human beings reproduced asexually and that human offspring were self‐sufficient. In that case, would any culture have developed an institution anything like what we know as marriage?  It seems clear that the answer is no. 

And our view explains why not.  If human beings reproduced asexually, then organic bodily union—and thus comprehensive interpersonal union—would be impossible, no kind of union would have any special relationship to bearing and rearing children, and the norms that these two realities require would be at best optional features of any relationship. Thus, the essential features of marriage would be missing; there would be no human need that only marriage could fill. 

The insight that pair bonds make little sense, and uniquely answer to no human need, apart from reproductive‐type union merely underscores the conclusions for which we have argued: Marriage is the kind of union that is shaped by its comprehensiveness and fulfilled by procreation and child‐rearing.  Only this can account for its essential features, which make less sense in other relationships.  Because marriage uniquely meets essential needs in such a structured way, it should be regulated for the common good, which can be understood apart from specifically religious arguments.  And the needs of those who cannot prudently or do not marry (even due to naturally occurring factors), and whose relationships are thus justifiably regarded as different in kind, can be met in other ways. 

So the view laid out in this Article is not simply the most favorable or least damaging trade‐off between the good of a few adults, and that of children and other adults.  Nor are there “mere arguments” on the one hand squaring off against people’s “concrete needs” on the other.  We reject both of these dichotomies.  Marriage understood as the conjugal union of husband and wife really serves the good of children, the good of spouses, and the common good of society.  And when the arguments against this view fail, the arguments for it succeed, and the arguments against its alternative are decisive, we take this as evidence that it serves the common good.  For reason is not just a debater’s tool for idly refracting arguments into premises, but a lens for bringing into focus the features of human flourishing.

In addition to this paper, if you want to hear an outstanding podcast that features a traditional marriage advocate debating a gay marriage advocate, you cannot do better than listening to the Unbelievable? podcast entitled “The Gay Marriage Debate – Peter Tatchell vs Peter D Williams.”  Peter Williams verbally makes many of the same arguments you will read in the marriage paper, and he does a truly exceptional job of it.

Category: Gay Marriage, Marriage | 7 Comments »
Tags: Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Peter D. Williams, Peter Tatchell, Robert George, Ryan T. Anderson, Sherif Girgis, Unbelievable?, What Is Marriage?

Related posts:

1. Why Do Civilizations Care about Marriage?
2. What is the Problem with Gay Marriage?
3. Why Should the State Endorse Gay Marriage?
4. Why Should You Vote “For” the NC Marriage Protection Amendment?
5. NY Senate Rejects Gay Marriage

Posted By Bill Pratt on May 11, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

I am told again and again by blog commenters that there is absolutely no controversy over any aspects of Darwinian evolution among those who study biology in the scientific community.  Here is a typical quote from a recent commenter, who was speaking about the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute’s advocacy of teaching the controversy over certain aspects of evolution:

There is no scientific controversy. None. Not one bit. At all. This is purely a religiously motivated, and intentionally manufactured one, to appear as a scientific controversy. But appearances can be deceiving, especially when it is done intentionally to try to create controversy where none exists in scientific terms, one that does not match up to the evidence science has revealed from the reality we share.

But this is simply not true.  There is plenty of controversy in the world of evolutionary biology.  You just have to read. 

I thought it would be helpful to point out just one prominent biologist’s disagreement with the standard evolutionary account.  His name is James Shapiro and he is a molecular biologist at the University of Chicago.  A pro-ID scholar, William Dembski, wrote a review of Shapiro’s latest book, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, where he carefully describes Shapiro’s disagreement with the standard account.

Dembski starts by quoting evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne, who gives a succinct definition of evolution:

There is only one going theory of evolution, and it is this: organisms evolved gradually over time and split into different species, and the main engine of evolutionary change was natural selection.  Sure, some details of these processes are unsettled, but there is no argument among biologists about the main claims . . .  While mutations occur by chance, natural selection, which builds complex bodies by saving the most adaptive mutations, emphatically does not.  Like all species, man is a product of both chance and lawfulness.

Dembski continues:

Coyne here depicts the form of Darwinism that currently reigns, what is called the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which combines classical Darwinism (which holds to universal common ancestry, evolutionary gradualism, and natural selection) with modern genetic theory (which locates the source of heritable variation in genetic mutations, i.e., writing errors in DNA).

So, if this is the standard view of evolution, and there is no controversy over it, then we should expect Shapiro to agree with his colleague, right?  Wrong.  According to Dembski,

Of all these elements, Shapiro only subscribes to one, namely, universal common ancestry, or common descent, the claim that all organisms trace their lineage to a common ancestor (thus making all organisms alive today cousins). On every other point, Shapiro demurs.

Read that again.  Shapiro only agrees with common descent and disagrees with the rest of Coyne’s description of evolution.

Thus, when it comes to the claim that evolution proceeds gradually, Shapiro writes (p. 89): “Do the sequences of contemporary genomes fit the predictions of change by ‘numerous, successive slight variations,’ as Darwin stated, or do they contain evidence of other, more abrupt processes…? The data are overwhelmingly in favor of the saltationist school that postulated major genomic changes at key moments in evolution.”

If Shapiro simply left matters there, however, he might align himself with proponents of punctuated equilibrium who, keeping faith as much as possible with neo-Darwinism, see the principal source of biological variation in genetic copying errors, otherwise known as “mutations.”  But Shapiro rejects  this view as well.  For him, variation, which is always the creative potential of any evolutionary theory (no variation, no evolution), is not a random affair at all.  Rather, organisms intelligently control their variation and thereby facilitate the evolutionary process. 

Shapiro writes (143): “Living cells and organisms are cognitive (sentient) entities that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth, and proliferation. They possess corresponding sensory, communication, information-processing, and decision-making capabilities.  Cells are built to evolve; they have the ability to alter their hereditary characteristics rapidly through well-described natural genetic engineering and epigenetic processes as well as cell mergers.”

Dembski then concisely summarizes Shapiro’s view of evolution:

Organisms behave purposefully.  They evolve themselves.  They do this by intentionally modifying their own DNA.  Within neo-Darwinism, DNA is a read-only memory subject to occasional copying errors.  For Shapiro, DNA is a read-write memory, with the organism itself deciding when and where to modify its DNA.

Enough said, I think.  Shapiro differs dramatically from evolutionary orthodoxy.  He is representative of the active debate that is occurring among scientists who study evolution.  Why should these differing views not be openly discussed?  Why am I told that there is no controversy when there clearly is?  Let’s just admit that there are scientific debates within the evolutionary community, instead of pretending they don’t exist.

Category: Evolution | 7 Comments »
Tags: Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, James Shapiro, Jerry Coyne, William Dembski

Related posts:

1. Is Junk DNA Evidence for Darwinian Evolution?
2. Is Darwinian Evolution Falsifiable?
3. Americans are Skeptical of Darwinian Evolution
4. How Is Evolution Defined? Part 1
5. How Is Evolution Defined? Part 2

Posted By Bill Pratt on May 9, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Every once in a while, you may hear from hyper-skeptics that Jesus probably never existed, or that if he did exist, we cannot know anything about him because the historical evidence is so poor.  Mike Licona, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus, provides a sampling of quotes from scholars who have studied the historical Jesus, and who regard the idea that Jesus never existed as simply false.  These quotes span from 1958 to present day.

Truth is not determined by a vote, but when it comes to historical studies, it certainly is important to see where the scholarly consensus lies.  After all, these people have supposedly studied the evidence far more than the average person.  So, below I have copied Licona’s collection of quotes just to give you an idea of the consensus opinion on the existence of Jesus.

Bultmann (1958): “Of course the doubt as to whether Jesus really existed is unfounded and not worth refutation. No sane person can doubt that Jesus stands as founder behind the historical movement whose first distinct stage is represented by the oldest Palestinian community.”

Bornkamm (I960): “To doubt the historical existence of Jesus at all . . . was reserved for an unrestrained, tendentious criticism of modern times into which it is not worth while to enter here.”

Marxsen (1970): “I am of the opinion (and it is an opinion shared by every serious historian) that the theory ['that Jesus never lived, that he was a purely mythical figure'] is historically untenable.”

Grant (1977): “To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has ‘again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars.’  In recent years ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus’—or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.”

M. Martin (1991): “Well’s thesis [that Jesus never existed] is controversial and not widely accepted.”

Van Voorst (2000): “Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their [i.e., Jesus mythers] arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.”

Burridge and Could (2004):  “There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.”

Allison (“Explaining,” 2005): “No responsible scholar can find any truth in it.”

Maier (2005): “the total evidence is so overpowering, so absolute that only the shallowest of intellects would dare to deny Jesus’ existence.”

R. J. Miller in Scott, ed. (Finding, 2008): “We can be certain that Jesus really existed (despite a few hyper-historical skeptics who refuse to be convinced).”

Vermes (2008): “Let me state plainly that I accept that Jesus was a real historical person.  In my opinion, the difficulties arising from the denial of his existence, still vociferously maintained in small circles of rationalist ‘dogmatists,’ far exceed those deriving from its acceptance.”

C. A. Evans in Evans and Wright (2009): “No serious historian of any religious or nonreligious stripe doubts that Jesus of Nazareth really lived in the first century and was executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea and Samaria.”

Category: Historical Christ | 14 Comments »
Tags: Mike Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus

Related posts:

1. Anne Rice on Liberal Jesus Scholars
2. Did Jesus Really Exist? Bart Ehrman Thinks So
3. What Can Historians Tell Us About Jesus’ Resurrection?
4. What Historical Evidence Exists for the Resurrection?
5. Jesus' Resurrection an Early Belief

Posted By Bill Pratt on May 7, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Tomorrow is a big day in North Carolina because we are casting votes on whether a marriage protection amendment should be added to the state constitution, something that a large number of other states have already done.  I have written on marriage and gay marriage in the past, and you can go read those posts if you’d like (some of the links are found at the bottom of this post under “related posts”). 

But what I want to do today is quote an email I received from my friend, Mark.  It was written by pastor John Held, and I think captures many of the important points in this debate.  Please take a couple of minutes to read it below, and don’t forget to vote “for” the amendment tomorrow, if you are a citizen of North Carolina.

Responding to the Opposition to the Marriage Protection Amendment

In their opposition of the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA), anti-amendment activists (strongly supported by national homosexual advocacy groups) are intentionally using the terms “anti-gay,” “discriminatory,” “bigotry,” and “harmful” to describe the Marriage Protection Amendment. This is part of a well thought-through, strategic tool designed to engender an emotional response from uninformed North Carolinians.
 
As outlined in their book After The Ball, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, both gay activists, explain:

In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector…[this will] lay the groundwork for the process of conversion by helping straights identify with gays and sympathize with their underdog status.

Homosexual activists have made no secret of the fact that the redefinition of marriage is number one on their social agenda. The popular accusations being made against the Marriage Protection Amendment fall into this “victim imagery” strategy.

Nothing about the Marriage Protection Amendment is anti-homosexual, and it does not represent an attack on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (LGBT) individuals.

The Marriage Protection Amendment states, “that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”  It is a pro-marriage amendment with the sole intention of preserving and promoting the
historic definition of marriage as a public institution that binds men and women together to create the best environment for raising children. The amendment elevates current North Carolina law to the level of a constitutional amendment to protect the definition of
marriage from being redefined by either activist judges or politicians. 

It has been claimed that the Marriage Protection Amendment “writes discrimination into the state constitution…” Understandably, the term “discrimination” immediately creates in people’s minds the image of other people being unfairly excluded from something that is available to everyone else.  Of course, it is true that marriage, by definition, is an exclusive institution – in the sense that it is not open to everyone who wants to get married.  For example, children cannot get married, an adult cannot marry a child under a certain age, certain blood relatives cannot get married (a mother to her son, father to his daughter, brother to his sister), a man cannot marry two women, and a man cannot marry a woman who is married to someone else.
 
When the law defines marriage as between one man and one woman it does not prohibit any homosexual person from marrying, they would just have to marry in the same way that everyone else in society has to marry – they would have to marry someone of the opposite sex. This right is extended equally to all unmarried adults in the society.
 
When homosexuals claim that they want to marry another person of the same sex, they are not simply claiming the right to marry that is available to everyone else in society.  They are claiming a new right that has not previously been available to anyone in this society.  Such a right has been denied to everyone in the society, prior to this time; so, it is not discriminating against them to say that this kind of right is denied to them.

By way of analogy, if a man claimed that he wanted to marry his sister (or any of the examples given above), he is really claiming the right to redefine marriage according to his own desires and preferences.  He is not just claiming a private right for himself, but is
claiming a right to change the definition of marriage that has been adopted by the whole society.  And the law is correct when it denies him the right to do this.  Therefore, restricting marriage to one man and woman does not violate anyone’s fundamental rights. In fact, what the marriage protection amendment actually does is preserve the unique and special understanding of marriage that has existed in nearly every civilization since the beginning of time from the ongoing attempts to strip marriage of its core meaning and purpose.

Christians should also recognize that the end result of the redefinition of marriage is the silencing of the Church on the biblical understanding of sex, gender, and the family.  Granted, for individual churches and denominations that have either rejected the authority of Scripture or re-interpreted Scripture (abandoning grammatical-historical hermeneutical principles), so that the Bible’s clear teaching is muddled, this is not an issue – they have already capitulated to the current culture.  Yet, in places where same-sex marriage has been legalized, religious freedom and free-speech (of individuals and churches that hold to traditional marriage) are under attack in the name of promoting the full acceptance of homosexuality.  The Marriage Protection Amendment would help protect the ability of the church to continue to proclaim what Scripture teaches about sex, gender, and marriage, including what the Bible says about homosexual activity (and adultery and fornication and pornography and all other forms of soul-destroying sin).
 
The accusation that the Marriage Protection Amendment will harm children is unfounded.  Even the liberal British philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex…It is of children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society.”  No fact has been more convincingly established by social science literature then the fact that children are best served when reared in a home with a married mother and father. Just because other broken family forms exist (from single mothers to same-sex partners) does not mean that the marital norm for society should be redefined in order to keep the children in these families from feeling different.  In a post-Genesis 3 world, not every family will reflect the marital ideal of one man and one woman provides for individuals and society at large.

The Marriage Protection Amendment is really about one thing: preserving the historic understanding of sexuality, gender, and the family in North Carolina and protecting the rights of parents (and the church) to transmit traditional values about these core issues to the next generation.

Category: Gay Marriage, Marriage | 38 Comments »
Tags: John Held, NC Marriage Protection Amendment

Related posts:

1. Why Do Civilizations Care about Marriage?
2. Why Should the State Endorse Gay Marriage?
3. What is the Problem with Gay Marriage?
4. What Are the Best Arguments for Traditional Marriage?
5. NY Senate Rejects Gay Marriage

Posted By Bill Pratt on May 4, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1, we looked at 6 definitions of evolution and explained how different Christian creationist positions deal with them.  If you recall, definition 6 was the most controversial:

6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.

Jay Richards has several interesting things to say about definition 6 that are worth repeating:

Of all the senses of evolution, this one seems to fit with theism like oil with water. According to the blind watchmaker thesis, all the apparent design in life is just that—apparent. It’s really the result of natural selection working on random genetic mutations. (Darwin proposed “variation.” Neo-Darwinism attributes new variations to genetic mutations.)

The word “random” in the blind watchmaker thesis carries a lot of metaphysical baggage. In Neo-Darwinian theory, random doesn’t mean uncaused; it means that the changes aren’t directed—they don’t happen for any purpose. Moreover, they aren’t predictable, like gravity, and don’t occur for the benefit of individual organisms, species, or eco-systems, even if, under the guidance of natural  selection, an occasional mutation might enhance a species odds of survival.

The blind watchmaker thesis is more or less the same as Neo-Darwinism as its leading advocates understand it. It is usually wedded to some materialistic origin of life scenario, which isn’t about biological evolution per se. This so-called chemical evolution is often combined with biological evolution as two parts of a single narrative.

Unfortunately, the blind watchmaker thesis isn’t an eccentric definition of the word evolution. It’s textbook orthodoxy. For instance, Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson explained evolution by saying, “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.” Darwin himself understood his theory this way: “There seems to be no more design,” he wrote, “in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the winds blow.”

And here’s how the late Darwinist Ernst Mayr put it: “The real core of Darwinism, however, is the theory of natural selection. This theory is so important for the Darwinian because it permits the explanation of adaptation, the ‘design’ of the natural theologian, by natural means, instead of by divine intervention.” Notice that Mayr says, “instead of.”

These are representative quotes from the literature. From the time of Darwin to the present, Darwinists have always contrasted their idea with the claim that biological forms are designed or created. That’s the whole point of the theory.

Theists claim that the world, including the biological world, exists for a purpose; that it is, in some sense, designed. The blind watchmaker thesis denies this. So anyone wanting to reconcile strict Darwinian evolution with theism has a Grade A dilemma on his hands.

Category: Evolution | 4 Comments »
Tags: blind watchmaker, Charles Darwin, Ernst Mayr, George Gaylord Simpson, Jay Richards

Related posts:

1. How Is Evolution Defined? Part 1
2. Which Part of Evolution Are We Talking About?
3. Is Darwinian Evolution Falsifiable?
4. Does a 4.5 Billion Year Old Earth Prove Evolution is True?
5. Americans are Skeptical of Darwinian Evolution

Posted By Bill Pratt on May 2, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the first things I was taught in my seminary classes was to carefully define terms and concepts before launching into a debate over them.  So many times, when I see two people arguing about a topic, they are using different definitions for the same words.  It’s impossible to have a productive discussion with someone when you don’t agree on how to define terms.

Recently I read a great article in the Christian Research Journal (Vol. 35 / No. 1 / 2012), written by Jay Richards, on the topic of evolution and its varying definitions.  The article is entitled “Thinking Clearly about God and Evolution.”  I thought I would excerpt some portions of the article because I think it will be helpful to all of us when we discuss this controversial subject.

Richards writes:

It’s a lot easier to define theism than to define evolution. It’s been called the ultimate weasel word. In an illuminating article called “The Meanings of Evolution,” Stephen Meyer and Michael Keas attempt to catch the weasel by distinguishing six different ways in which “evolution” is commonly used:

1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature.

2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population.

3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.

4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.

5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.

6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.

As Christians, what are we to make of these 6 different definitions of evolution?  Definitions 1-4 are almost universally accepted by young earth, old earth, and theistic evolutionists.  They all agree that plant and animal populations have changed over time, that there is limited common descent, and that natural selection acting on random mutation does affect plant and animal populations.

Definition number 5 is where young earth and old earth creationists get off the boat.  These folks believe that God specially created different kinds of plants and animals at specific moments in earth’s history.  Old earth creationists stretch out those creative acts over some 3.5-4 billion years, whereas young earth creationists compact those creative acts into a 6-day period.  In either case, it would be impossible for  universal common descent to be true.  Finally, theistic evolutionists would have no problem with definition 5.

Definition 6 is where even theistic evolutionists disembark.  Why?  Because they do not accept that evolution is “unguided, unintelligent, [and] purposeless.”  God is behind evolution and He planned it out and executed on the plan through the initial conditions and physical laws that he put in place.

In part 2, I will excerpt some further insightful comments from Richards on definition 6, which is by far the most controversial definition of evolution.

Category: Evolution | 11 Comments »
Tags: Christian Research Journal, definitions of evolution, Jay Richards, Thinking Clearly about God and Evolution

Related posts:

1. How Is Evolution Defined? Part 2
2. Which Part of Evolution Are We Talking About?
3. Is There Any Scientific Controversy Over Darwinian Evolution?
4. Does a 4.5 Billion Year Old Earth Prove Evolution is True?
5. Are You Skeptical of Global Warming and Evolution?

Posted By Bill Pratt on April 30, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this series, we argued that physicalism and determinism are self-refuting because they undermine rationality.  At the end of part 1, we said that there are three conditions of rationality that physicalism does not allow, and Dr. Moreland explains them below:

First, humans must have genuine intentionality; they must be capable of having thoughts and sensory awareness of or about the things they claim to know. For example, one must be able to see or have rational insight into the flow of an argument if one is going to claim that a conclusion follows from a set of premises. We can simply see that if you have: 1) If P, then Q, and, 2) P, therefore, you also have, 3) Q. This requires an awareness of the logical structure of the syllogism itself.

 As we saw earlier in this chapter, intentionality is a property of mental states, not physical ones. Thus, this first feature of rationality is incompatible with physicalism . . . . Intentionality is not a physical property.

The second factor is the enduring I.  Moreland explains:

Second, in order to rationally think through a chain of reasoning such that one sees the inferential connections in the chain, one would have to be the same self present at the beginning of the thought process as the one present at the end. As Immanuel Kant argued long ago, the process of thought requires a genuine enduring I.

In the syllogism above, if there is one self who reflects on premise 1), namely, “If P, then Q,” a second self who reflects on premise 2), namely, “P,” and a third self who reflects on the concluding statement 3), namely, “Q,” then there is literally no enduring self who thinks through the argument and draws the conclusion. As H. D. Lewis noted, “One thing seems certain, namely that there must be someone of something at the centre of such experiences to hold the terms and relations together in one stream of consciousness.”  

However, we have already seen in a previous blog post that physicalism denies a literal, enduring I, and thus physicalism is at odds with this necessary condition of rationality.

The third necessary condition for rationality is libertarian freedom of the will.

Finally, rationality seems to presuppose an agent view of the self and genuine libertarian freedom of the will. There are rational “oughts.” Given certain evidence, I “ought” to believe certain things. I am intellectually responsible for drawing certain conclusions, given certain pieces of evidence. If I do not choose that conclusion, I am irrational.

But “ought” implies “can.” If I ought to believe something, then I must have the ability to choose to believe it or not believe it. If one is to be rational, one must be free to choose her beliefs in order to be reasonable. Often I deliberate about what I am going to believe, or I deliberate about the evidence for something. But such deliberations make sense only if I assume that what I am going to do or believe is “up to me”—that I am free to choose and, thus, I am responsible for irrationality if I choose inappropriately. But we have already seen that physicalism . . .  rule[s] out libertarian freedom.

Moreland, thus, concludes that physicalism rules out the possibility for rationality.  “It is self-refuting to argue that one ought to choose physicalism . . . on the basis of the fact that one should see that the evidence is good for physicalism. Thus, substance dualism is the best view of the self and is most consistent with the preconditions of rationality.”

Category: Free Will, Mind-Body Theory, Philosophy | 19 Comments »
Tags: dualism, intentionality, J. P. Moreland, libertarian free will, physicalism

Related posts:

1. Why Is Physicalism Self-Refuting? Part 1
2. Why Is Identity Important in the Physicalism/Dualism Debate?
3. What Are the Key Concepts In the Physicalism/Dualism Debate?
4. Is Free Will Possible for the Physicalist?
5. What Are the Differences between Mental and Physical Entities? Part 4

Posted By Bill Pratt on April 27, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the previous post, we saw that physicalism seems to inevitably lead to determinism.  Determinism, if you recall, means that every event, including all of your thoughts, feelings, desires, and choices, is determined by the physical conditions antecedent to it.  The renowned atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell said it this way: 

When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.

If determinism is true, then what follows?  J. P. Moreland points out that ”a number of philosophers have argued that physicalism . . .  must be false because [it] impl[ies] determinism and determinism is self-refuting.”  Moreland quotes J. R. Lucas speaking of the determinist:

If what he says is true, he says it merely as the result of his heredity and environment, and of nothing else. He does not hold his determinist views because they are true, but because he has such-and-such stimuli; that is, not because the structure of the universe is such-and-such but only because the configuration of only part of the universe, together with the structure of the determinist’s brain, is such as to produce that result. . . . Determinism, therefore, cannot be true, because if it was, we should not take the determinists’ arguments as being really arguments, but as being only conditioned reflexes. Their statements should not be regarded as really claiming to be true, but only as seeking to cause us to respond in some way desired by them.

Moreland also quotes H. P. Owens:

Determinism is self-stultifying. If my mental processes are totally determined, I am totally determined either to accept or to reject determinism. But if the sole reason for my believing or not believing X is that I am causally determined to believe it, I have no ground for holding that my judgment is true or false.

Determinism, and therefore, physicalism, then appear to be self-refuting.  It might be helpful to flesh this out more.  Moreland argues that physicalism, itself, undermines rationality.  The physicalist cannot claim to know that physicalism is true, or claim to believe in physicalism for good reasons, because to know something is true for good reasons requires at least three factors be assumed.

These three factors are intentionality, an enduring I, and genuine libertarian free will.  All three of these are conditions of rationality will be discussed in part 2 of this series.

Category: Mind-Body Theory, Philosophy | 4 Comments »
Tags: Bertrand Russell, determinism, dualism, H. P. Owens, J. P. Moreland, J. R. Lucas, physicalism

Related posts:

1. Why Is Identity Important in the Physicalism/Dualism Debate?
2. Is Free Will Possible for the Physicalist?
3. What Are the Key Concepts In the Physicalism/Dualism Debate?
4. What Is Physicalism?
5. What Are the Differences between Mental and Physical Entities? Part 8

Posted By Bill Pratt on April 25, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you recall, at the end of the series comparing physicalism and dualism, I promised to look at additional problems for physicalism.  Before doing so, let me remind you what physicalists believe.  Here is philosopher J. P. Moreland:

According to physicalism, a human being is merely a physical entity.  The only things that exist are physical substances, properties, and events.  When it comes to humans, the physical substance is the material body, especially the parts called the brain and central nervous system.  The physical substance called the brain has physical properties, such as a certain weight, volume, size, electrical activity, chemical composition, and so forth.

Physicalists are usually metaphysical materialists who believe that all that exists is matter in its different forms.  There is nothing immaterial that exists.

Moreland brings us to a fundamental human capacity that we all take for granted, that of free will.  What do we mean by free will?  Moreland explains:

When we use the term free will, we mean what is called libertarian freedom: Given choices A and B, I can literally choose to do either one. No circumstances exist that are sufficient to determine my choice. My choice is up to me, and if I do A or B, I could have done otherwise. I act as an agent who is the ultimate originator of my own actions.

Is there room for free will under physicalism?  Moreland argues that there is not.

If physicalism is true, then human free will does not exist.  Instead, determinism is true.  If I am just a physical system, there is nothing in me that has the capacity to freely choose to do something.  Material systems, at least large-scale ones, change over time in deterministic fashion according to the initial conditions of the system and the laws of chemistry and physics.  A pot of water will reach a certain temperature at a given time in a way determined by the amount of water, the input of heat, and the laws of heat transfer.

There are other problems that follow if determinism is true.  What about moral obligation or responsibility?  What about moral praise or blame?

Now, when it comes to morality, it is hard to make sense of moral obligation and responsibility if determinism is true.  They seem to presuppose freedom of the will.  If I “ought” to do something, it seems to be necessary to suppose that I can do it.  No one would say that I ought to jump to the top of a fifty-floor building and save a baby, or that I ought to stop the American Civil War, because I do not have the ability to do either.  If physicalism is true, I do not have any genuine ability to choose my actions.

Moreland concludes with the following:

It is safe to say that physicalism requires a radical revision of our commonsense notions of freedom, moral obligation, responsibility, and punishment.  On the other hand, if these commonsense notions are true, physicalism is false.

Category: Free Will, Philosophy | 27 Comments »
Tags: J. P. Moreland, materialism, physicalism

Related posts:

1. Why Is Physicalism Self-Refuting? Part 2
2. Why Is Physicalism Self-Refuting? Part 1
3. Does Man Have Free Will?
4. Why Is Identity Important in the Physicalism/Dualism Debate?
5. What Are the Differences between Mental and Physical Entities? Part 4

Posted By Bill Pratt on April 20, 2012

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Recall that in part 2, we looked at a couple skeptics’ views on testimony.  The first skeptic’s view appeared to be self-defeating, but the second skeptic singled out testimony about supernatural events, thus avoiding the self-defeating approach of the first skeptic.  However, the second skeptic has a different sort of problem, which I flesh out below.

I (Bill) trust people who tell me that some supernatural claims are legitimate; he (the skeptic) trusts people who tell him that no supernatural claims are legitimate.  How do we decide whose testimony to trust without begging the question?  For if the skeptic starts out by knowing that all supernatural claims are false (which he seems to have done in this case), then he clearly has begged the question of whether a specific supernatural event occurred.

This is where worldview presuppositions come in.  Skeptical atheists will generally claim that their worldview has nothing to do with their skepticism.  They claim that they are able to remain neutral when assessing any evidential claim (it is religious folks who are hopelessly biased).  But this is clearly false.  Because I believe that a theistic God who can perform miracles exists, I am very open to the possibility that some miracle reports from history are true.  Because the atheist denies that such a God exists, then he is closed to these miracle reports.

So when the Christian asks atheist skeptics to look at the historical testimony supporting a miracle claim, most of these skeptics, though not all, will argue that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, that people make mistakes all the time, that magicians can fool us, that ancient people were gullible, that witnesses in trials are sometimes wrong, that UFO sightings are bogus, that hypnotists can trick us, and on and on and on.

My response to all of these points is this: I know about all of these things, but we trust eyewitness testimony to tell us about much of what we know about the world.  Therefore, when I hear testimony about a seemingly unusual event that I personally have not ever experienced, instead of ruling it out immediately, I should apply criteria developed by experts on testimony of the kind I want to investigate to determine if the testimony is credible.  That way, I can hopefully detect false testimony.

Some skeptics have retorted: “You disbelieve miracle claims from other religions, and you don’t apply the same criteria to them as you do to the miracle claims of Christianity.  Therefore, you are inconsistent and biased, just like you accuse us of being.”

My response is this: I do not categorically deny all miracle claims from other religions, so the accusation is false.  I believe that God is able to perform whatever miracles he wants whenever he wants.  In addition, I believe in the existence of angelic beings who are also able to perform feats that are supernatural in nature, and they may be involved in alleged miracle claims of other religions.  Bottom line, I don’t take a hard position on any miracle claim until I have really looked into the testimony evidence for it.

Where does this leave us?  First, testimony is a fundamental way we learn about the world.  To cast serious doubt on testimony is ultimately self-defeating because you have to rely on testimony to doubt testimony.  The more rational and reasonable way to approach testimony is to apply criteria that have been developed by experts who have studied testimony in a particular discipline (e.g., law, history).

For my Christian friends, when you are dialoguing with a skeptic who starts denigrating the reliability of testimony, ask them to list their criteria for establishing  when testimony is credible or not.  That will move the conversation on to something more profitable.

For my skeptical friends, please understand that telling us all the ways that testimony can be wrong is just not a fruitful approach.  We know about all that.  Move on to giving us your non-question-begging criteria for determining whether particular testimony is credible or not.  If you cannot do that, then our suspicion that your worldview is driving your skepticism starts to become confirmed.

Category: General Apologetics, Miracles, Philosophy, Skeptics | 50 Comments »
Tags: epistemology, eyewitness testimony

Related posts:

1. Is Testimony Really That Unreliable? Part 2
2. Is Testimony Really That Unreliable? Part 1
3. Does the Scientific Method Preclude the Existence of Miracles?
4. Can Science Test for the Supernatural?
5. How Would You Respond to a Miracle?