All posts by Bill Pratt

Meaning of Life

Is There More to Life than Technology?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I own an iPhone 5. My family owns an iPad, two iPhone 4s, and multiple iPods. Oh, and we bought a Google Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas. We also have DirecTV with whole home DVR capability. This list could go on for a while – believe me.

I love technology, and, in fact, I work in the semiconductor industry. Semiconductor technology, in particular, has revolutionized our modern lifestyle, enabling all that is electronic in the world.

But what is the purpose of it all? Sometimes we forget that all of these gadgets are means to an end. The gadgets are not ends in themselves. The technology that produces these gadgets is also not ultimately an end in itself. The science that produces the technology that produces the gadgets is also not an end in itself.

With all of the gadgets surrounding us today, we sometimes forget what the purpose of all of it is. Our ancient ancestors, however, saw things a lot more clearly than we do today. They weren’t nearly as distracted as we are.

Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the thirteenth century, considered the answers that people of his day gave to the question: “What brings ultimate happiness to a person’s life?” Here are the answers:

  1. wealth
  2. honor
  3. fame
  4. power
  5. bodily health
  6. pleasure
  7. wisdom and virtue (goods of the soul)
  8. God

Notice the order. After studying each of these 8 answers, Aquinas listed them in order of least important to most important. Where are you spending your time?

Are you obsessed with building wealth? Aquinas would say that you are way off the mark – not even close to what brings ultimate happiness.

What about bodily health? We are clearly a culture obsessed with health. We want to postpone death as long as possible. But bodily health is not the ultimate good.

Of the earthly goods, wisdom and virtue are the highest, and the world would certainly be a profoundly better place if everyone used their technology to pursue them, but Aquinas argued that even wisdom and virtue miss the mark.

The only thing that our soul yearns for more than anything else is to know and experience the Perfect Good. According to Aquinas, the Perfect Good of man, the thing that will give him ultimate happiness, cannot be something which was created:

It is impossible for any created good to constitute man’s happiness. For happiness is the perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether; else it would not be the last end, if something yet remained to be desired. Now the object . . . of man’s appetite is the universal good. . . . Hence it is evident that naught can lull man’s will, save the universal good. This is to be found, not in any creature, but in God alone.

Consider what Jesus said, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt 6:33)

Speaking to God, St. Augustine said “Thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

C. S. Lewis advised, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

Put your technology in its place. You can certainly use it to gain a modicum of wealth, honor and perhaps fame. Use it to gain power over your life. Use it to keep yourself healthy and provide recreation. Use it to gain wisdom and virtue.

But ultimately, all of that is less than nothing, a positive impediment, if you aren’t pursuing God.

Philosophy

How Do We Know Reality?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I know this seems like a ridiculous question to normal people, but this is actually a very live and contentious debate among the professors teaching your children at the university. So you need to pay attention to these debates, lest your college expenditures be flushed down the drain!

The classical Christian answer to this question comes from Thomas Aquinas, the brilliant thirteenth century theologian and philosopher. His answer to this question is conveniently summarized for us by another brilliant Christian philosopher, Norm Geisler, in his book about Thomas Aquinas, called, strangely enough, Thomas Aquinas. So how do we come by knowledge?

Aquinas believes that knowledge comes either by supernatural revelation (in Scripture) or by natural means. All natural knowledge begins in experience. We are born, however, with an a priori, natural, innate capacity to know. Everything that is in our mind was first in the senses, except the mind itself.

How do we know something for certain?

Knowing something for certain is possible by means of first principles. First principles are known by way of inclination before they are known by cognition. These include: (1) the principle of identity (being is being); (2) the principle of noncontradiction (being is not nonbeing); (3) the principle of excluded middle (either being or nonbeing); (4) the principle of causality (nonbeing cannot cause being); and (5) the principle of finality (every being acts for an end).

By these first principles the mind can attain knowledge of reality—even some certain knowledge. Once the terms are properly understood, these first principles are self-evident, that is, they are undeniable.

Aquinas believed that all certain knowledge can be reduced to these first principles. Without these first principles in place, no knowledge is possible. In fact, the world becomes completely irrational and incoherent.

So how is reality to be studied? According to Geisler,

Like Aristotle, Aquinas believes it is the function of the wise person to know order. The order [that] reason produces in its own ideas is called logic. The order [that] reason produces through acts of the will is known as ethics. The order [that] reason produces in external things is art. The order [that] reason contemplates (but does not produce) is nature.

Nature contemplated insofar as it is sensible is physical science. Nature studied insofar as it is quantifiable is mathematics. Nature or reality studied insofar as it is real is metaphysics. Metaphysics, then, is the study of the real as real or being insofar as it is being.

It should be incredibly clear from Aquinas’s thoughts (and Aristotle’s) that the modern idea that physical science is the only discipline that produces knowledge is utterly false. Physical science is only applicable to the study of nature “insofar as it is sensible.”

Logic, ethics, art, mathematics, and metaphysics are all separate disciplines from the physical sciences. To subsume these areas under physical science is an error that has profoundly negative consequences for mankind. If physical science is king, then men will be obsessed with technology (what physical science produces). Ethics, logic, art, metaphysics, and even mathematics will all serve technology.

Is that the world we want to live in?

Philosophy, Theology

Is Talk about God Meaningless?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The empiricist David Hume believed so. According to Hume, who is possibly the most famous skeptic in the history of modern philosophy, only ideas that are based on direct sense experience or are true by definition are meaningful. Hume famously said the following:

If we take in our hand any volume — of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance — let us ask, “Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?” No. “Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?” No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

The logical positivists of the twentieth century picked up Hume’s torch and ran with it. They developed the principle of empirical verifiability. This principle, which was the core principle of their philosophical system, states that there are only two kinds of meaningful propositions: 1) those that are true by definition and 2) those that are empirically verifiable.

Obviously theological statements about the attributes of God are not true by definition and are not empirically verifiable, so if the logical positivists are correct, then all talk about God is literally meaningless! Are Hume and the logical positivists correct?

Norm Geisler recounts his first introduction to the positivists in a college philosophy class where the entire semester would be spent on studying logical positivism. To make it even more fun, the professor considered himself to be a logical positivist! Here is his account retold in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist:

On the first day of that class, this professor gave the class the task of giving presentations based on chapters in [logical positivist A. J.] Ayer’s book Logic, Truth, and Language. I volunteered to do the chapter titled “The Principle of Empirical Verifiability.” Now keep in mind, this principle was the very foundation of Logical Positivism and thus of the entire course.

At the beginning of the next class, the professor said, “Mr. Geisler, we’ll hear from you first. Keep it to no more than twenty minutes so we can have ample time for discussion.” . . .  I stood up and simply said, “The principle of empirical verifiability states that there are only two kinds of meaningful propositions: 1) those that are true by definition and 2) those that are empirically verifiable. Since the principle of empirical verifiability itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, it cannot be meaningful.”

That was it, and I sat down.

There was a stunned silence in the room. Most of the students . . . recognized that the principle of empirical verifiability could not be meaningful based on its own standard. It self-destructed in midair! In just the second class period, the foundation of that entire class had been destroyed!

Both Hume and the logical positivists built their philosophies on self-defeating principles. In their zeal to rid the world of God-talk, they also rid the world of their own philosophical systems.

Philosophy, Science and God

Has the Multiverse Killed Metaphysics (and God)?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you believe a handful of famous physicists (e.g., Hawking, Mlodinow, and Smolin), the answer is yes. Multiverse theorists, like the three aforementioned physicists, posit a multiverse which contains numerous universes with different physical laws. According to Austin L. Hughes, in his article “The Folly of Scientism,”  these theorists hold that “if there are enough universes, one or more whose laws are suitable for the evolution of intelligent life is more or less bound to occur.”

While any universe with a particular set of laws may be very improbable, with enough universes out there it becomes highly probable. This is the same principle behind the fact that, when I toss a coin, even though there is some probability that I will get heads and some probability that I will get tails, it is certain that I will get heads or tails. Similarly, modern theorists imply, the multiverse has necessary being even though any given universe does not.

Our contingent universe, a universe which did not have to necessarily exist, came into being because of the multiverse. But where did the multiverse come from? Hughes suggests that the

problem with this argument is that certainty in the sense of probability is not the same thing as necessary being: If I toss a coin, it is certain that I will get heads or tails, but that outcome depends on my tossing the coin, which I may not necessarily do. Likewise, any particular universe may follow from the existence of a multiverse, but the existence of the multiverse remains to be explained.

Not only the existence of the multiverse needs to be explained, but the universe-generating process. Hughes continues:

In particular, the universe-generating process assumed by some multiverse theories is itself contingent because it depends on the action of laws assumed by the theory. The latter might be called meta-laws, since they form the basis for the origin of the individual universes, each with its own individual set of laws.

So what determines the meta-laws? Either we must introduce meta-meta-laws, and so on in infinite regression, or we must hold that the meta-laws themselves are necessary — and so we have in effect just changed our understanding of what the fundamental universe is to one that contains many universes. In that case, we are still left without ultimate explanations as to why that universe exists or has the characteristics it does.

Put another way, multiverse theorists have merely backed the problem up one step. They have failed to answer the fundamental metaphysical question of why anything exists at all. What is the source of the multiverse, or is it self-existent, uncaused, and necessary? If it is self-existent, uncaused, and necessary, then it sounds a lot like the theistic God that they so like to ridicule.

Creeds

Why Do Christians Use Creeds?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

All Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and many Protestant churches, recite ancient creeds during masses or services, but why? Why not just stick to the Bible?

Ancient creeds were developed by the early Christian church to summarize the central beliefs of Christianity. These were understood to be the beliefs that separated Christians from all other religions or worldviews.

It is important to remember that the Bible, as it currently exists, was not available to most Christians during the first 1500 years after Christ’s death and resurrection. Therefore, these creeds were incredibly important to encapsulate the core teachings of the faith.

Today, most Christians do have access to Bibles, and so what use are creeds? Thomas Aquinas lived in the period before Bibles became truly widespread, but he certainly had access to the Scriptures in the thirteenth century. His take on the role of creeds is quite helpful. Norm Geisler summarizes Aquinas’s views in his book Thomas Aquinas:

For Aquinas, the truth of faith is contained in Scripture. A creed “is not added to Scripture, but drawn from Scripture.” It is a later symbol of God’s revelation; “a later symbol does not abolish an earlier one, but elaborates on it.”

Not only is Scripture sufficient apart from the creeds, but it is also perspicuous. “The truth of faith is sufficiently plain in the teaching of Christ and the Apostles.” It is only because “wicked men have wrested apostolic teaching and the other Scriptures to their own destruction, [that] declaration of the faith against those impugning it is needed from time to time.”

The need for a creed arises out of the fact that “the truth of faith is contained in sacred Scripture, but diffusely, in divers ways and, sometimes, darklv.” Hence, “the result is that to draw out that truth of faith from Scripture requires a prolonged study and a practice not within the capacities of all those who need to know the truth of faith. . . . That is why there was a need to draw succinctly together out of the Scriptural teaching some clear statement to be set before all for their belief.”

For Aquinas, creeds summarize what is already contained in Scripture. Creeds make it simpler for Christians to know the “truths of faith.”

This simplification, though, has qualifications around it. Geisler explains in his book, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, that the person who wants to promote creeds ahead of Scripture is making a mistake.

On the surface, creeds and commentaries may seem more clear than the Bible, but this is misleading for several reasons. First, they are only summaries of what the Bible teaches, and good summaries are often clearer than the whole text. Second, when the Bible summarizes a truth it is as clear, if not clearer, than any statement someone can make about the Bible (cf. Matt. 7:12; 1 John 5:12). Third, the comparison is false, since the Bible does not systematize most doctrines, as do human creeds and theologies. Hence, they cannot be clearer systematic statements than the non-systematic ones in the Bible for the simple reason that no fair comparison can be made between systematic and non-systematic statements. Finally, unless the Bible were clear enough to begin with, no one would be able to summarize or systematize it.

Put simply, a summary is built on the foundation of what it summarizes. As Geisler says, “unless the Bible were clear enough to begin with, no one would be able to summarize or systematize it.” While creeds are helpful in enumerating the central truths of the faith, they should never replace the careful study of Scripture itself.

Parenthood

What Causes a Kid to Join a Gang?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A couple of months ago I read a blog post written by J. Warner Wallace about the importance of fathers that struck a nerve in me. I had a good father while I grew up (still do), and I have tried to be a good father for my kids, but I see too many examples around me of fathers who are absent, or who are around, but don’t seem to engage at all with their children.

Wallace worked as a Gang Detail officer in the early 90’s and listen to what he saw:

Our city was culturally and ethnically diverse, and we had a gang problem that seemed to transcend ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic boundaries. We had wealthy Korean gangsters, middle class white gangsters, and upper, middle class and lower class Hispanic and African-American gangsters.

Wallace wondered what the common denominator was that drove kids from so many different backgrounds into gangs. Here is his answer:

Many of the white gangsters had fathers that were uninvolved, alcoholic or “deadbeat” dads. Many of the Korean fathers were first generation Koreans who never learned the English language, started businesses in our community and worked so hard that they had absolutely no relationship with their sons.

Some of the Hispanic fathers were incarcerated and most of our Hispanic gangsters came from a multi-generational gang culture. Many of the African-American gangsters told me that they never even knew their father; they had been raised by mothers and grandmothers without their biological dads.

Over and over again I saw the same thing: young men who were wandering without direction or moral compass, in large part because they didn’t have a father at home to teach them. Many studies have confirmed my own anecdotal observations.

Wallace’s advice to Christian fathers: teach your children. Citing Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Wallace says the following:

This is the role and duty of fathers; to teach our kids to embrace the image of God in which they were created. So today, . . . I would like all of the fathers who read this post to recognize their debt to their own fathers. If your father was absent, be grateful that you have a chance to do what he never did. Be a dad. Start teaching your kids. Take the words of Dr. Tony Evans to heart:

“It is a fool who says. ‘I do not tell my children what to believe’, because if you don’t, someone else will. The drug addicts are commanding your children and your children are obeying. The lust mongers are commanding your daughters and your daughters are obeying. For God’s sake YOU command something!”

There is some solid advice.

General Apologetics

What Are Christians Obsessed With?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Is it abortion, or gay marriage, or euthanasia, or any of the other culture war battlefronts? Does the culture war consume our time and money?

David French took a look at Christian charities a couple years back to see who Christians give their money (thanks to Greg West for the link). French reviewed the donations given to well-known Christian culture war organizations, such as Alliance Defense Fund, the Family Research Council, National Right to Life, and Americans United for Life. According to tax records, “these organizations raise quite a bit of money—almost $60 million combined.”

French also noted, ironically, that the biggest culture warrior on the left, the ACLU, took in about $130 million by itself. It seems the left is quite concerned with winning the culture wars.

What French did next was look at the top three Christian anti-poverty charities: World Vision, Compassion International, and Samaritan’s Purse. According to the left, Christians are concerned more with babies in the womb than helping babies after they are born. We are against gay marriage, against abortion, against everything! We aren’t for anything positive.

Get ready for this. Guess how much money was donated to only the top three Christian anti-poverty charities? Here is French:

Their total annual gross receipts (again, according to most recently available Form 990s) exceed $2.1 billion. The smallest of the three organizations (Samaritan’s Purse) has larger gross receipts than every major “pro-family” culture war organization in the United States combined. World Vision, the largest, not only takes in more than $1 billion per year, it also has more than 1,400 employees and 43,000 volunteers.

What are we to make of this? It seems that Christians are something like twenty times more concerned with helping the poor of the world than fighting the culture wars. Anyone who says the opposite is simply ignorant. As French summarizes, “Historically, monetarily, and with our time and lives today, [we are] serving our fellow man.”

Existence of God, Science and God, Top Ten Posts of 2012

Does Science Disprove the Existence of God? #1 Post of 2012

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

As I’ve read comments on the blog over the years, I’ve often read a version of the following: “science disproves the existence of God.”  Even prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger say something similar.  Edgar Andrews, in his book Who Made God?, points out that this argument can be circular.

Andrews explains:

The assertion is based on the claim that science presents no evidence for the existence of supernatural forces or phenomena. It sounds plausible until you look a little more closely. The argument can be expressed as a syllogism as follows:

1. Science is the study of the physical universe.

2. Science produces no evidence for the existence of non-physical entities.

3. Therefore non-physical entities such as God do not exist.

Why is this a circular argument?  What is the fallacy?

Again the fallacy is clear.  In point (1) ‘science’ is defined as the study of the physical or material world.  This statement thereby excludes by definition any consideration by science of non-physical causes or events.  The proposition then argues from the silence of science concerning non-material realities that such realities do not exist.  By the same logic, if you define birds as ‘feathered creatures that fly’, there’s no such thing as an ostrich.  It’s fairly obvious in this example whose head is in the sand.  The correct conclusion, of course, is not that ostriches are mythical but that (on your restrictive definition of ‘bird’) they are not birds.  In the same way, to define science as the study of the material universe simply prohibits science from making statements about a non-material entity like God.  If the remit of science is deliberately restricted to the physical realm, the fact that science (so defined) tells us nothing about God has no bearing whatever on his existence or non-existence, as most scientists recognize.

Science can actually give us evidence of God’s existence, as Andrews argues throughout his book, and as I’ve argued elsewhere.  Science examines effects in the natural world that lead us back to God as the cause of those effects.

Historical Christ, Top Ten Posts of 2012

Do Historical Scholars Think Jesus Existed? #2 Post of 2012

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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: A New Historiographical Approach, 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.”

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages, Top Ten Posts of 2012

Are You Worried About the Unpardonable Sin? Part 1 – #3 Post of 2012

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you are worried, then it’s likely that you have not committed the unpardonable sin.  This sin is first mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 12, verses 31-32, in the context of Jesus’s healing of a demon-possessed man.  As always, when reading the Bible, we need to look at the surrounding verses before we can draw any conclusions about the meaning of verses 31-32.

In verse 22, a demon-possessed man who is blind and mute is brought to Jesus.  The text says that Jesus heals him, but some religious authorities who are Pharisees, instead of acknowledging that Jesus’s miraculous healing was of God, accuse him of using the power of Satan to drive out the demons.

In response, Jesus makes four rejoinders in verses 25-29.  First, he says that it is illogical for Satan to be casting out his own demons.  Second, among the Pharisees themselves there were exorcists, so Jesus asks if they also cast out demons by the power of Satan.  Of course they would deny this.  Third, Jesus explains that if he is driving out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has arrived.  Fourth, Jesus explains that in order for Satan’s forces to be cast out, someone stronger than Satan must be acting – the Spirit of God.

After refuting the Pharisees’s accusations, Jesus gives a most serious warning in verses 30-32:

He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.  And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.  Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

So what is this blasphemy against the Spirit that will not be forgiven?  In context, it appears Jesus is referring to the Pharisee’s denial that Jesus’s miraculous healing was of the Spirit of God.   The blasphemy of the Spirit, according to J. F. Walvoord, is: “attributing to Satan what is accomplished by the power of God.”  Clay Jones puts it this way: “They attributed the undeniable, unambiguous, healing work of the Holy Spirit – in this case He freed a man from being ravaged by a demon that resulted in the man’s being blind and mute – to the power of Satan.”

Now that we have a better understanding of what the unpardonable sin is, we need to dig into why Jesus chose this time and this group of people to issue his dire warning.  We will tackle that in part 2.