Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: The following is a legacy recording from the archives of the C.S. lewis Institute. While the audio quality of these recordings may vary, the content remains vital to the mission of the Institute to develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: I said that what I'd like to do in this brief course with you is to consider, is to consider one of the objections to Christian faith which it seems to me is profoundly characteristic of.
Well, what do we call it? Profoundly characteristic of the intelligentsia in the modern world.
Not characteristic of everybody, but I suppose none of the objections to Christianity down throughout the ages have been characteristic of everybody in society. But I want to look at one of the characteristics of one of the objections to Christianity which is profoundly characteristic, it seems to me, of intelligentsia of college educated people in the modern Western world.
What I also suggested last time is that I think you don't really find, you don't really find this particular objection very much before the modern world.
I suppose once you see it, you can find some foreshadowings of it. But by and large, what we're dealing with here, it seems to me is, is one of the deep characteristics, one of the deep features of modernity. What we're dealing with is something that confronts us as modern men and women.
Okay, it's part of modernity. So what we're really doing here is conducting an apology in the classic sense of apology.
Because the classic sense of apology was just that. An apology is a response to objections. An apology is a reply to an objection.
That's what apology meant way back from the, from the time of the very first apology written by a member of the Christian Church, that by Justin the Martyr. Justin, who was martyred in Rome and he wrote his apology around 14150 A.D. something like that.
Since that time, in more recent times, people have sometimes begun to think of an apology as arguments for the faith.
And ironically, I think the reason that we've begun to think of apologies as arguments for the faith, evidences for the faith is just because that's one way of replying to the objection that we're going to talk about here. But actually what we'll be doing is conducting an apology in the classic sense. How does one reply to one particular kind of objection?
So what's the objection? What's the challenge? And what's the objection?
I called the challenge last time simply to have a word for it, but I think it's a good word for it. The evidentialist challenge.
And the evidentialist challenge As I structured it has two main parts to it. These two parts. First, the person who issues this challenge says in the first place that unless you're rational in holding the faith, you shouldn't hold it.
He connects rationality with obligation. See, that's his first move, right?
You ought not to hold the faith unless it's rational for you to hold the faith.
That's his first claim. Connecting rationality with obligation. That's the first part of his challenge.
And secondly, what he says is this. Furthermore, he says it's not rational for you to hold the faith. It's not rational for anybody to hold the faith unless you hold it on the basis of adequate evidence, unless you've inferred it from some beliefs of yours which provide adequate evidence for it.
It's not rational for you to hold it unless you've inferred it from some other beliefs of yours which constitute adequate good evidence for it.
It's not rational for you to hold it unless you hold it on the basis of some other beliefs of yours which constitute good argument for it. So it's those two things, theses that he holds together. And now if you put them together. Let me say one more thing.
If you put them together, what he's really saying is this.
What he's saying is hook those two together. He's saying that it's wrong for a person to hold the Christian faith unless the person holds that faith on the basis of adequate evidence.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: Yeah, this is just a clarification. Last week you never mentioned unless a person infers that from other beliefs. Okay, that seems to apply to me that adequate evidence would be constituted from just like inferring from a set of beliefs.
Okay, but what would constitute truth or making those beliefs adequate evidence if they're only beliefs.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Oh, I see.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: That's more focused on faith as opposed to.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. And I should have clarified that.
But you do see the structure of the idea. What the evidentist wants to say is, look here, a human being's got a batch of. I'll use the word belief and then I'll explain. Human being has a batch of beliefs.
Now, some human beings also hold the Christian faith.
It's only right for you. It's only rational. And so only right for you to hold the Christian faith. Unless if you hold that on the basis of some other beliefs of yours. If you've inferred it from some other beliefs of yours. Now believe.
This is a terribly important point, and I confess that at this point I was using belief in the philosopher's sense rather than in the ordinary person sense. And I'll try not to do much of that. But here's what I mean by belief. I don't mean that it's shaky or uncertain or anything like that. By belief throughout here, all I mean is assent.
When I speak about beliefs, I just mean believing something. All I mean is accepting may even amount to knowledge. But see, the philosopher's idea is that if you know something, at least you accept it.
I mean, if I know that there are some people in this room, I accept that there are some people in this room. I assent to the proposition that there are some people in this room. So belief.
Does that help? Belief means accepting.
To believe so and so, as I'm using it just means to accept it. And you might accept it with great certitude, or you might accept it very hesitantly. Either way, it's accepting it or believing it.
So belief is used in that broad sense that it covers knowledge. So it goes all the way from terribly firm knowledge to, well, I'm inclined to believe it.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Couldn't you just, in the basis of holding faith, couldn't you? Essentially, you could run into an almost vicious cycle if someone could accept that Christ died on the cross.
You don't. Nobody has. Okay, I do not. Since I didn't live, then I never saw it. But I accept that. Therefore, it's a belief of mine, and on that basis I hold faith.
But does that constitute an evidence strong enough to.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: No.
That's why I always tucked in the word adequate evidence.
So underline the word adequate. What the evidentialist is not. The evidentialist is saying something with an awful lot more bytes than just to accept the faith. You've got to infer it from something else that you believe. What he's saying is you've got to. You've got to.
To be right in accepting the faith. You've got to have inferred it from something else that you believe which provides adequate, good, sound, solid evidence for it. Now you're ready to ask the question which is right and proper. How do you tell? How do you tell what that is? Fair enough. That's the question to.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Okay, is that a question you're going to try to.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: That's the challenge. Now, what I said is that you actually get what you might call an evidentialist objection to Christian faith.
If you add the third point, which many people in the modern world surely do, they say, and thirdly, that adequate evidence is not available to us.
We human beings don't have Any such adequate evidence for the faith, you must have adequate evidence to believe rationally, to accept rationally, and to accept responsibly, you must believe rationally. But thirdly, as a matter of fact, that adequate evidence is missing. It's not available.
You go through all the arguments and you go through all the proposed evidences, and it's. It's not adequate, it's just inadequate.
It doesn't support it. Then you've got an objection. And I think that that's one of the most powerful and common objections in the modern world, among the intelligentsia in the modern Western world, to the Christian faith as indeed to other forms of theistic belief. I mean, it bites just as much against Judaism and Islam as it does against Christianity. Right.
This evidentialist would want to say the same, the same sort of thing there.
Now, I then went on to suggest.
That's what we talked about last time.
Okay.
I then went on to suggest that typically there have been two sorts of responses to this challenge and objection.
The one response has been to try to meet the chance to try to meet it, to try to give the adequate evidence.
In effect, the one kind of response is to take up the challenge on number three. A fellow comes along and says, but the adequate evidence is missing.
And lots of Christians have said, it's not missing. It's not either missing. Here it is. I've written my book. Read it and you'll see the adequate evidence.
That's the response to the challenge. That's a response to the challenge which, which was already undertaken in the 18th century.
Last time I said that, I think you first find this challenge issued with clarity by John Locke at the end of the 1600s.
I think that's the first time that you really see it issued with clarity. Locke undertook to meet the challenge. So Locke, John Locke himself wrote a book whose title is the Reasonableness of Christianity.
The Reasonableness of Christianity. Locke said Locke issued the challenge and said, in effect, I've met it and here's my book reader, the Reasonableness of Christianity.
And what I also suggested is that typically you'll find the attempts to meet the challenge coming in two parts.
You'll find people first who give arguments for the existence and the character of God.
Think of that like this. You'll find people first who argue for theism, and then secondly, they'll classically typically offer arguments for the reliability of scripture.
I mean, of Christian scripture, Old and New Testament.
And then given the content of scripture, you've got Christianity. So usually, as with Locke himself, the argument Went and came in two parts. First, a sort of defense of theism argument evidences for the for God's existence and character and so forth. And secondly, for the reliability of scripture and then read scripture and you'll find Christianity coming out.
That's one way of replying to the challenge. That's one way of taking it up, and that's the way of meeting it. The other way I suggested is had far and away its most vivid representative in Karl Bartholomew.
And Barth's way of dealing with the challenge was to dismiss it.
Stay away from it. He said to his fellow Christians, it can only be dangerous and pernicious to try to meet this challenge. And we looked at why he said that last time, you know, he said, before you go into it, think about what you're going to say. If the unbeliever knocks holes in your arguments and your evidences, what are you going to do then?
Are you going to stick with what you've been saying and give up the faith? Then you're trusting reason more than Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, are you going to stick with the faith anyway? Then you weren't serious with the unbeliever when you said, hey, I want to have a dialogue with you about evidence.
So Barth said, stay away from it. Stay away from it. Have nothing to do with it. In effect, Barthesmist dismissed it with a mighty flourish of his hand. It can only be dangerous. Now, what I suggest is what I'd like to do with you people is a third thing.
What I'd like to do is to look at the challenge.
Not first off, try to meet it, not dismiss it with a mighty swipe of the hand, but probe it.
To say what about it? To look into it and to consider, to analyze it, to consider its acceptability, to begin to probe the fascinating and fundamental and important issues that it raises, some of which interest, interestingly, you people have begun to raise. You've begun asking, well, what is that evidence going to look like? And all of that. Well, that's beginning to do the third thing right?
That's neither dismissing it with a wave of your hand nor trying to construct the arguments, but it's beginning to say, tell me more about that objection. What does it actually come to? That's just what I'd like to do with you people in these three remaining sessions to analyze it, to look at it. What I also suggested lastly by way of review is that there are, to my philosopher's mind, fascinating developments occurring in the last ten years in what philosophers call epistemology Sorry about that. Big ponderous word, epistemology, but it comes from this. The Greek word for knowledge was episteme.
And I better put the line at a different point.
The Greek word for knowledge was episteme, and the Greek word for theory was logos. And so epistemology is theory of knowledge, theory of rationality, something like that. In the last 10 years, I think I can say this. In the last 10 years, epistemology has come unstuck among philosophers.
Lines of thought which for centuries were accepted as the truth are being profoundly questioned with fascinating results and diverse results. I mean, philosophers are all over the map as the result of that.
We'll see. I think I can explain in what way it's all come unstuck, which makes it to my mind vastly more interesting. When I took epistemology at Harvard, I frankly found it a bore. Just a bore. It just seemed to me a sleepy enterprise.
I think it's become fascinating in the last 10 years, and in effect, I'll show you why.
Okay, so that's the project. That's a bit of review.
We all together questions on that.
Yeah.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Paul might have one question here.
One possible approach to resolving this might be for those of us who are evangelicals to try to look at the Bible and look and see what, if anything, the Bible teaches regarding apologetics.
For instance, what was Paul doing in Acts 17?
What was Paul talking about in Romans 1?
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Yes. Right. And I want to.
In the third lecture, I want to talk about Romans 1. Right. What's he saying there?
Yeah.
Though I think I'm going to argue that the line I'm taking is faithful to what Paul says in Romans 1.
But I'm also aware of the fact, of course, that all these diverse strategies adopted by Christians, that they've all claimed that they're faithful to the Scripture, you know. So.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: In general, I would have to say, can we arrive at a consistent interpretation of those passages?
[00:16:42] Speaker B: I think we can. I think we can.
That we don't have to ignore some in favor of the others, but that there's a certain.
That there's. I mean, the main point of the Bible is not to teach us a pack of apologetics, of course, but you do see a vision of how it is that the human being comes to know God.
And I think mainly it doesn't say that the human being comes to know God by arguments. It happens in some other way.
Let's start here fairly briefly. Even though one could talk about this at length, I ought to say a word about how I'm Going to understand things. Faith.
Okay. So end of review.
Unless you've got questions left about that.
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Did you say you were going to tell us what's exciting about epistemology in the last 10 years?
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but not right now.
Sorry.
I mean, flag all these things in your notes. I mean, I keep saying later on. Later on, later on. And I may not get back to all of them, but these will get back to. Yeah.
You've got a question? No.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Are you going to talk about later on who some specific people are to raise this challenge and things like whether anything meets the challenge, Whether anybody of knowledge meets that challenge.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Though before we plunge in and decide how to meet the challenge, I want to ask, is it a good challenge?
I mean, if somebody issues a challenge to you, in effect, one response is to try to meet it. Another response is, I don't accept the challenge.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. Whether anything meets it. Not just religious beliefs, whether it is anything.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Ah, yeah, okay. Yeah, we'll, in effect, we'll get into that.
What we saw last time, though, is three important people who issue the challenge. John Locke, who issues it and I think really is probably the first to clearly issue it and try to meet it and he tries to meet it.
Secondly, we look briefly at the contemporary German theologian Wolfhauk, who accepts the challenge and says, I meet it.
Third, we looked at the American philosopher Michael Scriven, who works in.
Well, at Berkeley, who accepts the challenge, issues the challenge and says it can't be met.
And he says that after he's looked at a whole lot of arguments for God's existence and he says they all flop, then he gives you the challenge. And then, how does he put it? Atheism is the obligatory thing, or something like that. So those are three people who issue the challenge. And what you had there is two of them who say it can be met. Locke and Pahnenberg from Separated by three centuries, and Scriven, who says it cannot be met.
I want to say at the beginning here a little bit about faith. How I'm going to. How I am understanding that. And one could talk about this at length in other contexts, but here we've got to be sort of brief.
The New Testament writers, also the Old, but especially the New Testament writers, make it clear that faith is something that God requires of his human creatures.
But I think they understand faith in two different ways. Sometimes faith is understood as one among other virtues, as the tradition called them, one among other virtues.
Remember 1 Corinthians 13, for example, faith, hope, and love, faith, hope, and charity.
Faith is one of the three. God requires faith of us, but he also requires hope of us. And he also requires love or charity of us.
But I think there are other passages. There are other passages in the New Testament and in the Old Testament when faith is used in a more comprehensive. The concept of faith is used in a more comprehensive way, namely as covering the totality, the root totality of what it is that God asks of his human creatures.
What God asks of us, in a word, is faith.
That, I think, is how Hebrews 11 is thinking of it, and Romans 4 and 6 and so forth, not as one among other virtues. But if you've got to put it in a word, what it is that God asks of us human beings, it's faith.
And when faith is used in that comprehensive sense, as opposed to that more limited sense, okay, when faith is used in that more comprehensive sense, pretty clearly what it means is faith is trust.
Faith is reliance.
Faith is confidence, trust, reliance, confidence, things like that.
The Greek word used there is the word pistis, P I s T I s.
And both in classical Greek and Greek of the New Testament times, pistis is regularly used as a sort of synonym for. Or I'll put it the other way around if we are translating it from ordinary Greek texts of the time, the word pistis, which we'd have to translate it with such English words as trust, reliance, placing one's confidence in, and so forth.
Okay, that's how I want to use it.
Now. An implication of that is this.
Faith, when thus understood as ultimate trust, reliance, confidence.
Faith, when thus understood, is not believing some propositions on somebody's say so, which is really how so much of the Christian church has defined faith. Faith, I say, is, when thus understood, is not believing some propositions on somebody's say so, specifically on the say so of the church or the Scriptures.
Faith is not believing some propositions.
Faith just isn't the phenomenon of believing some propositions.
Faith is the phenomenon of trusting God, of placing one's confidence in God. One's root confidence, of placing one's ultimate trust in reliance on faith is that it's not accepting some propositions for true on somebody, say so. So think of it like this.
The sort of faith, the alternatives to faith, in that sense, the alternatives to faith are placing your trust in something else than God.
Thus idolatry.
The alternative to faith is idolatry or thinkably not placing your trust in anything. Faith, trust in God is between those two, idle and trusting nothing.
Faith does not have as Its sort of opposites having proved something or not believing it at all.
So it's not an intellectual thing. It's trust. And its opposite is trusting something else in God idolatry.
Now, I got to give a but right away.
First, though, I think that point probably not unfamiliar to most of you. I think that point is immensely important in this sort of discussion.
So much of the church, I think down throughout the ages really has slid into thinking of faith as belief, believing various things rather than trusting God, with the result that the core of Christianity has been understood over and over is the acceptance of a batch of doctrines as the acceptance, acceptance of a body of teachings, of dogmas, which is exactly how Thomas Aquinas defines faith. The acceptance of truths about God on the reliability of the revealer, acceptance of truths about God propositions.
And I myself was reared in a tradition where it seemed to me that people tended, I don't want to say more than that, but tended to slide into thinking of one's acceptance of the gospel of the faith as the acceptance of doctrines and darkness.
That's not how the New Testament thinks of faith, and that's not how I want to think of faith here. Now, the. But, but of course, but of course it's true that to trust somebody, you've got to believe some things about them.
Fair enough.
I mean, you can't trust somebody without believing various things about them, right? Without having some beliefs. So trust, put it like this, trust necessarily incorporates some beliefs.
Trust necessarily incorporates some. Some views about reality.
Trust necessarily incorporates some convictions about reality, even though it's not the same thing as convictions about reality.
Now, what the evidentialist is really doing, oh, let's have a phrase for that, let's just call that the belief content of faith, okay? The belief content of that trust which constitutes Christian faith.
So what pictures faith is that trust and one of the hubs that goes out from it and is connected with it and so forth. One of the spokes rather is various beliefs. You've got to have some convictions about reality. Now, what the evidentialist really does is this. He wants to zero in on that belief content. He says, I want to talk about that. You people, you can get your trust afterwards. I want first to raise this question.
Those beliefs that you Christians have about reality, which, because you've got them, you place your trust in God, you may not hold those beliefs unless you've got some good evidence for their truth.
Okay? That's what the evidentialist is saying.
So maybe I'm a little bit too prickly here, the point I'm really making is let's not slide into. Because of how the argument is constructed, let's not slide into thinking of faith as just believing various propositions, because that's what the evidentialist is zeroing in his attack on his challenge on. Let's keep in mind that faith is more than that, it's trust.
It's like walking across the bridge instead of just running some tests, some theoretical tests on the soundness of the bridge and the existence of the bridge and so forth.
Okay, so that though the belief content is what the evidentialist is going to zero in on, and now we're ready to, as it were, begin to do the work. Any question about that?
Yeah, way back.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Is there some extent to which you could act in reliance on a proposition without being totally confident?
In other words, somebody says, follow me down the road that way and I'll show you a pot to fold.
Well, you may think it's very improbable this person's really going to show you a pot of pole, but you might fall down the road anyway just for.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: You know, nothing lost and maybe much gained.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Or you might walk across the bridge, realizing that, well, I can jump out of danger if it does collapse.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah, right. So you needn't. So to trust, that's an interesting question.
How confidently must one believe these background propositions so as to trust? And your point is a good one, sometimes not all that confidently, but you've got to at least believe that there's a bridge.
I mean, if you don't even believe there's a bridge, presumably you're not going to set your first foot off across the river.
So always there will be some background beliefs, it seems to me, which constitute the framework within which the trust can take place. Though you need not believe those all.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: That firmly, it seems like a relevant question for the Christian. I haven't phrased it very often.
Despite our doubts, it seems that there's a certain amount of stepping out in faith we need to do and to sort of reinforce the faith by actually relying and trusting.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Right, right.
And see, once you've made the distinction between the truth claims and the trust, then you can pose questions to some extent independently.
There's a Jewish theologian, philosopher, Dick Rubenstein, who teaches at Florida State, who's written on the Holocaust, for example.
Rubenstein says, I don't doubt that God exists, but I think that after the Holocaust he cannot be trusted.
That's a way of dividing the question, too. You were dividing it in the opposite way that's another way of dividing the question.
Right. And if we had a long course available to us, the real thing to do would be to talk about both of those. I mean, what does one say? What do I say when I, as I have on several occasions talk to Rubenstein and he says, I, as a Jew after the Holocaust, I can't trust God?
What does one say to that?
That's another immensely important objection.
A different sort of.
But anyways, it's a good point you're raising. There are these two things, and they're somewhat loose. And the truth claims one may hold tentatively and yet trust with all one's heart, or the other way around is Rubenstein's case.
Yeah.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: The thing about religion, in terms of stepping on the bridge, let's say, it seems that there's a lot things compared to telling you to take that first step, just following with what your teachings are, that make that first step without any understanding a risky step. Because you may find yourself very comfortable on the bridge, so to speak.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
And that's one way of putting it. You may find yourself very comfortable. It may also, of course, be that on the bridge you have certain experiences which, which then, not before then ground your confidence as to the reliability of the bridge. Maybe you've got to do the stepping out sometimes before you can gain the evidence. Maybe that's true too.
But what the evidentialist.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: That's one way of saying. The other way is to say, once you get on the bridge, you might feel comfortable just by virtue that that's where everyone else ahead of you is going.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
And then you begin to wonder, now, am I, Have I just slid into bourgeois comfort here?
What the evidentialist wants to say, though, is, look, you're a human being.
Listen to John Locke. You're a human being and God made you with some rationality, and you ought to use it. You're acting irresponsibly if you don't use it.
You ought to act rationally in the world, not irrationally. And to act rationally, you've got to have evidence.
You can be a fool if you want. I mean, you can be a fool, says the evidentialist, and walk out on those bridges and experience the comfort when they don't fall and the pain when they do.
But what he wants to say is, that's not acting rationally. That's not acting like a full blown, fully matured human being.
That's what he wants to say.
What do you say to that? That's what we want to probe.
What do you say to that?
Yeah, Mike, you may get into this.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: When you speak on epistemology, but what I want to know is you want.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: To keep my feet to the fire on that, don't you?
[00:32:51] Speaker A: It's not clear the difference between believing certain propositions and trusting certain beliefs.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't really try to explain the difference.
I took it that we've kind of got a feel for it, don't we? The difference between trusting somebody and believing that that person exists and that that person, you know, believing various things about that person.
You can believe that such and such a person exists and has such and such characteristics and not trust him.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: That adds a little to what you were saying, though.
First you define trust as simply abstract trust. Now you're focusing on trusting a person.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Oh, I meant. Oh, yeah, sorry, I maybe didn't make that clear. I meant trusting. Well, you can trust in causes also, of course, but here we're talking about trusting God, trusting God in Jesus Christ. And the analog to that is trusting a person. I mean, if you want to get some clues to how that goes, think about trusting a person.
And there, I want to say, when the New Testament speaks about faith in the comprehensive sense, the model that it's got in mind is the phenomenon of trusting a person and wants to say that that's different from holding various beliefs or propositions about that person.
Though it'd be very odd to trust somebody and have no beliefs about that person at all.
How firm they must be. You know, we can talk about that, but it'd be extremely odd to trust. I mean, I'm inclined to think impossible to trust Reagan to haul us out of the recession and not have any beliefs about Reagan. I mean, that just. You can't bring that off. It seems to me that just can't be so. There is some belief content, I want to say, and that's what the evidentialist wants to zero in on. He says, you've got to have evidence that that belief content is true.
But I want to make the point all the way through here. Let's not slide into supposing that having those beliefs is the same thing as trusting.
And I want to say the New Testament speaks about trusting God in Jesus Christ. That's its notion of faith. So I put it too abstractly. Paul. Sorry about that. Yeah.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: I'm reminded of an illustration. Once professors were in a meeting with Albert Einstein, and his wife was there, too, Mrs. Einstein. And so one of them came over and talked to her and asked her, do you understand all Dr. Einstein's theories. And she says, no, I don't understand Dr. Einstein's theories, but I understand Dr. Einstein.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: That's neat.
Okay, so it's the difference between a trust relationship to a person and accepting some theories, propositions, beliefs and so forth.
But they're connected. I mean, once you've made the point, don't confuse them. Then you've got to say that there's some connection between the two.
Okay, now let's begin to dig in.
What constitutes rationality?
185 times over I've been talking, I've used the phrase rational being rational. Rationality, the evidentialist says, before you believe, you'd better see to it that you're believing rationally. What's meant by believing rationally in all this? Let's take that one next.
Now, I suppose we speak about lots of different things as rational or irrational.
We speak about people as being rational or alternatively irrational about plans as rational, irrational about desires, I suppose, as rational desires and irrational desires, procedures as rational procedures, irrational procedures and so forth. From that whole mess, we want to talk just about beliefs as rational or non rational.
So lots of other things can be said to be rational. For us, it's just beliefs.
Okay, well, rational is a slithery word.
Need I tell you?
It's a slithery word.
Here's how I'm going to use it and I think here's how it's used in almost all the discussions. At a certain point we'll go back to John Locke and I'll try to show you that here's how he's using it.
I'm going to use rational, the rational belief as a synonym for.
Now you're going to think when I say it, well, that's not much help yet. Yeah, I know. So we'll get to that. I'm going to use rational. The rational belief is the justified belief.
And you want to say, ah, yeah, but what's a justified belief? Okay, let's let that sink in.
To believe first though, to believe something rationally is to be justified in believing it.
Okay.
To believe something rationally is to be justified in believing it.
Let's take rational as a synonym for justification.
Rationality in beliefs and justification in beliefs amounts to the same thing.
And what do you mean by justification in beliefs?
Next question.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I would think that rational could be taken objectively, whereas justified implies some kind of valuation.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: It's a normative idea.
I don't think so.
Well, once again, the word rational can be used in a variety of ways, but in The John Locke passage, for example, if we can take Locke as typical, we'll look at it. But over and over Locke is going to slide from speaking about rational to speaking about duty and obligation. Do you remember a little bit of that? So immediately it becomes a normative idea for him. And I think that's what it customarily is in this discussion.
Yeah.
Now the word can be used in other senses. So to some extent what I'm doing here is just saying I'm going to use the word rational in one amidst its protean multiplicity of senses. And it's clearly a normative sense. The rational belief is the justified belief.
And what's the justified belief?
Okay, that next. Now, I want to read you a brief passage, and it might even be worth copying it down because it's very brief. A brief passage from, by now an elderly philosopher who was a colleague of mine for a while at Yale, Brand, Blanchard, Blanchard, B L A N S H A R D.
Because I think this brief passage gives us a pretty good idea as to how we should think of justification in beliefs. Here's how it goes.
Everywhere and always, Blanchard says. Everywhere and always belief has an ethical aspect.
Then he goes on, there is such a thing as a general ethics of the intellect.
There is such a thing as a general ethics of the intellectual.
Here's Blanchard's idea, and it's a fairly customary one by now. Here's his idea.
Just as there are duties and responsibilities pertaining to how we treat other people, just I say, as there are duties and responsibilities pertaining to how we treat other people, so too there are duties and responsibilities pertaining to our believing, so too there are duties and responsibilities pertaining to our believings.
It's not, put it like it's not true that anything goes in how you treat other people.
And similarly, it's not true that anything goes in what you believe.
That's the idea that you can believe things which you shouldn't believe.
And that, of course, is deep in the evidentialist case, right? That it's possible to believe what you shouldn't, listen, shouldn't, ought not to believe.
So justice. There can be, as it were, let me use Blindstrut's word, ethics. Just as there can be an ethics for how you treat human beings, and I would say, just as there can be an ethics for how you treat nature, which would be ecological responsibilities, so there can be, as it were, an ethics for your believings. I myself, I guess, wouldn't use the word ethic there, but anyway, there are duties and responsibilities and Obligations and so forth pertaining to our believings so we can pull it together like this.
I think of the justified belief and so does Blanchard. The justified belief is the belief which is in accord with the norms for believing.
It is a frankly normative concept. The justified belief is the belief that's in accord with the norms we're believing.
That's the idea, yeah. I have a question.
[00:42:22] Speaker C: Now, the norms can differ from society to society. Now, is he making a statement and are you making a statement about that there is a gentle norm?
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:30] Speaker C: Or is a statement that, you know, as far as how you treat other people in different countries and different cultures?
[00:42:37] Speaker B: I'm going to. Well, two things. The evidentialist tacitly argues that there is a universal norm and on that I.
[00:42:45] Speaker C: Always looking for universals, but they never find them.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Well, he's got a proposal for one and on that I think he's right and next time I'm going to suggest one for you.
So I don't think that it varies from.
I mean, its application will be somewhat different from society to society given different facts about those societies, knowledge built up in different ways and so forth. But I think straddling it all is a norm which holds for all humanity and so does. And this evidentialist, we haven't unpacked everything yet, but he thinks the same thing, which is why he lays down this general challenge. He says never is it right for anybody to accept the Christian faith or indeed theism without having evidences for it. I mean, he thinks that that holds for all humanity, all times, all places.
So these norms, I'm going to argue are, he says, and I think he's right on that, have a universality to them.
Okay, so we can tie it together.
I think of it like this.
The rational belief is this. The rational belief is the justified belief.
And so to be rational in one's believings, to be rational in one's believings is to do as one well in one's believings. Here's a way of putting it. To be rational in your believings is to do as well in your believings as can rightly be asked of you, as can rightly be demanded and expected of you. Rightly, okay. To be rational in your believings, to be justified in your believings is to do as well is to be doing. Should put it like that, I suppose, is to be doing as well in your believings as can rightly, properly normatively be asked of you.
The rational belief is the belief that doesn't violate norms for belief. So here's one more way of putting it. The rational belief is the permitted belief.
The rational belief is the one that's permitted, that doesn't violate a norm.
The rational belief is like the permissible action when you're talking about morality, how you treat other people, that's I think, the rational belief.
So we've got rational belief tied up with justified belief. And the justified belief is. What have I done with the chalk? The justified belief is how we put it, the belief that does not violate the norms for believing.
Now of course, some of you are asking, but are there any norms for believing?
The evidentialist clearly thinks so, right? I mean, because that's his whole case. He says you ought not to be believing that. So he certainly thinks so.
Almost all philosophers do.
Recently in philosophy of science, a very few philosophers, one of the most well known of them being a philosopher out in California named Paul K. Fireabant Feyerabendt says in one of his essays talking about philosophy of science, he puts it like this, anything goes.
And when a short time ago I used the phrase anything goes, it was actually Feyerabund that I had in my mind.
We'll even see Mike, when we talk of get to the epistemology, I can indicate why Fireabent says sort of in desperation, anything goes. And what he means by that is that you can't believe wrongly or rightly, anything goes. Scientists can believe any old thing he wants.
He says science is like the construction of a work of art in which anything goes.
I doubt that too, but anyway, so I'm assuming that there are such norms and then the question are they at all universal? Is the next one that comes up. Now I think there's one more thing that we can say which might be helpful. So far we've tracked it down like this Rational is justified and the justified is the one that doesn't violate the norms for believing that amounts to its permitted right.
One more thing can be said, and here it's suggestive and helpful to look at the first page of that section from John Locke that I gave you last time.
Now I've got a few more here. Who lacks that?
Oh, why don't I let you pass them up?
Yeah, but I left it back. I'll take it along next time. It was absent minded of me not to take the whole stack of them, but actually the first selection on the first sheet is all I care about now do we all.
How are we doing? And there's one idea that Locke inserts in here which I want to add to what I've got on the board. But as we read through it, notice how very much he too thinks of rationality as a normative issue.
How tied up it gets with him. And I think he's right about this, with duties and obligations and so forth. Though admittedly the word reason can have other senses.
However, faith be opposed to reason.
Faith is nothing but a firm assent, or I use the word belief there. Ascent of the mind, which, if it be regulated as is our duty notice cannot be afforded to anything but upon good reason, and so cannot be opposite to it.
He that believes without having any reason for believing may be in love with his own fancies, but neither seeks truth as he ought. There you have it again. As he ought. Nor pays the obedience due to. Synonym for it, due to his Maker, who would have him use those discerning faculties he has given him to keep him out of mistaken error.
Now, flag that. I want to get back to the business of those discerning faculties. That's what I want to get back to. But let's continue.
He that does not do this to the best of his power, however he sometimes lights on truth is in the right but by chance. And I know not whether the luckiness of the accident will excuse. See, something needs excusing.
The idea is that some obligation has been violated. Right. Well, excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at least is certain that he must be accountable. There you have it again.
Accountable for whatever mistakes he runs into. Whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given him and seeks sincerely to discover truth by those helps and abilities he has may have this satisfaction in doing his duty. Once again, duty is a rational belief. What he means here is as a believing creature, as an assenting creature, that though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. For he governs his assent. Right, you know, according to the obligations, properly right. Another synonym and places it as he should.
Another synonym. Who in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves according as reason directs him. He that does otherwise transgresses against his own light and misuses those faculties.
Enough.
I mean, what have we got? 15 times over the notion of duty and some near synonym of it. Now there's one more. So, so far, what Locke says, assumes is what I've been saying. But there's one additional thing that comes out in Locke, and that's this.
What Locke is tacitly saying is this.
The unjustified belief is the belief. That is the belief that you're not permitted to hold okay. The unjustified belief is the belief that emerges from misusing your truth gathering faculties, abilities. Let's add that the unjustified belief is the belief that emerges from misusing your God given ability to gain truth and avoid falsehood.
That's the idea. So we can add that they're permitted the rational belief. The permitted belief equals the belief.
[00:51:00] Speaker A: Which.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: I've got to put it negatively now. The belief which does not result.
The belief which, let's put it the other way around, the belief which results from using a right, let's put it like that, from using a right, one's abilities to gain truth and avoid falsehood.
The rational belief, the justified belief, the permitted belief, the belief which doesn't violate your duties, all of that. That's just the belief which results from using rightly your abilities to gain truth and to avoid falsehood.
There we've got the linkages that we should keep in mind. I think that's what it is to believe rationally. Yeah.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Morality or belief hinges on that last piece which is what the goal is to see. It seems like you could come up with a whole other morality for belief in this. What is the permitted belief? If a goal was different, for example, during the Holocaust, if the goal is to survive, and you couldn't survive if you believed that the Holocaust would never end, there was no hope it would end, and that selecting a belief which was more improbable, of course there was less evidence and therefore probably less trouble, but nevertheless necessary to survive, namely that the Holocaust would someday end, leads to a different kind of problem.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: You're absolutely right about that.
It's the last idea that's really the clue. Because if the goal is beliefs that enable you to survive, or if the goal is beliefs that enable you to feel happy or something like that, then you get different results. But what the objector has got his eye on is truth, falsehood.
He says, look, I care about whether or not you Christians are believing rightly and whether you're rightly using, correctly using your abilities to gain truth and avoid falsehood. And then he says, and I've got a suggestion to make to you as to how you should use your abilities, namely, don't go ahead and assent to the faith until you've got some adequate evidence for its truth.
So you're absolutely right. Good point. If we changed the end here, gain truth and avoid falsehood to what you suggested, enable us to cope with crisis situations, give us emotional comfort or whatever, then you've got something different going on.
But I'm Assuming Locke is, and the whole batch of them are, that rationality is tied into this ability that we human beings have to so govern what we do and assent and believe and so forth, that we can get in touch with truth and that we can avoid falsehood.
And if you really think that that's out, then all of this is off to the side, then you've got to talk about something else.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: It's interesting that Locke holds that as the goal because the real that God is there, yes, thinking his thoughts after him is the moral thing to do.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: And of course he's really doing that because he thinks this challenge here can be met with respect to theism.
There's the adequate evidence available.
So okay, that's how I'd like to take rational. To be rational in one's beliefs is to be justified in them. It's to not be violating the ethics, the norms we're believing. It's to for one's belief to be permitted. It's to be using your ability to get in touch with reality, getting at truth and avoiding falsehood. It's to be using those abilities rightly.
It's the beliefs that emerge from such correct use that will be the rational that justify that permitted the duty fulfilling beliefs.
And now we're ready for one of the questions posed. But you with me on that.
So it's frankly a normative concept, or as Blanchard puts it, it's a frankly ethical concept as it powerfully is there for Locke.
So here's one of the two big questions I put to you last time that I want to discuss. Okay. Is being rational at all important to a Christian?
Is being rational at all important to a Christian?
Does it make any difference to him?
Does he? Or should he care a faggobalic?
Or should he thumb his nose at.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: It.
[00:56:00] Speaker B: When somebody comes along and says, but you're not believing rationally, should the Christian care about that objection. Or should he say, oh, couldn't care less, makes me feel happy.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: Are we going to accept locked? I mean in terms of the idea of regulation of faith by these discerning practices.
[00:56:22] Speaker B: That'S the second big question I want to get to. So no, let's not let that slide. Pass. But let's first ask this other one.
What do you think now in terms of this? Does rationality make any difference to a Christian? Or I really mean, should it?
Yeah, Steve.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: Yes and no. But I would answer no and yes.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: No and yes.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: First Corinthians 1 says no. First Corinthians 2 says yes.
[00:56:52] Speaker B: Now explain yourself.
[00:56:54] Speaker A: God has made foolish the wisdom of this world that intentionally man by his own wisdom could not find God.
God has ordained that to be the case.
However, for those who have, who are in Christ, we do speak of wisdom, but it is not the wisdom of this world. It is wisdom which begins with God. So it is supremely rational in that it is God centered.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: But not everybody will think it is right. Okay.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: It is foolishness.
That is the paradox of the foolishness of God is true wisdom, Whereas the wisdom of man is in fact foolishness.
[00:57:39] Speaker B: And what he's got in mind there is especially the Greek philosophers. The Greek philosophers will find this foolishness irrationality.
[00:57:49] Speaker A: So it's really to the called we preach Christ crucified.
And it's only those who are called who find this to be wisdom from God.
[00:57:59] Speaker B: But now suppose.
Suppose Michael Scriven comes up to you and says, or Pahnenberg or whoever, your beliefs are not rationally held.
Do you think you or another Christian should care a whit about that charge? Yes.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: Okay, then you have to argue what is rationality?
[00:58:24] Speaker B: And suppose we think of rationality along these lines. Being rational in your believings as follows is following the norms and the obligations and the duties for oblivion.
That's what it is.
It's to govern your ability to get at reality aright.
Now, should a Christian care the least about that?
Yeah, I don't know if I would.
[00:58:46] Speaker A: Equate the wisdom of this world of rationality.
[00:58:50] Speaker B: You mean thus conceived.
Right.
Well, Wes, were you going to answer?
[00:59:00] Speaker A: Well, I think it depends a lot on timing for purposes of a class and for purposes of a study. Obviously that's one of the first questions we ask if a person is despairing.
I doubt that that person relies on rationality.
Son has been called in for drug dealings.
So it really does depend a lot of situation.
[00:59:23] Speaker B: Yes, it's an answer to this, to the charge, to the objection.
Yeah.
[00:59:28] Speaker C: Well, another question in line with the question of what is rational is what reality?
[00:59:33] Speaker A: Are you comparing the two?
[00:59:35] Speaker B: The only one there is.
[00:59:38] Speaker C: Well, people have different views of that.
[00:59:39] Speaker B: Oh, I know they've got different views about it. But at least two of such dis. At least one of such disputants is always wrong.
That's how it seems to me.
Yeah.
[00:59:54] Speaker C: I think as people that hold the faith, we all recognize the innate emotional or spiritual aspect of that faith, which is, I think something.
Okay. That is the thing which a non believer does not accept.
Some guy died for me just doesn't sound rational.
But at the same time, okay, while we are not of this world.
We still have to relate in some sense to that world in our effort to witness and spread the word.
So in the sense that this world is ruled by rationality, particularly in the age of post enlightenment where people think only in rational terms, we have to at least be able to relate that irrational. In that sense, I would say yes, we should give.
[01:00:58] Speaker B: I guess I'd give a more.
I take it the next step. My answer to the question I raised is yes, I think the Christian does care about it for this reason.
I think the Christian firmly believes that not anything goes, that not everything goes in what we believe. He doesn't think that anything goes in how we treat nature. He doesn't think that anything goes in how we treat other human beings. He doesn't think that anything goes in how we treat. Treat God.
And I don't think that he thinks that anything goes in how we shape our beliefs.
And basically the rational belief is just the one which is in accord with the duties.
Let me say one more sentence, Paul, and then I'll let you jump in.
And I'm inclined to take the next step and say this.
My vision is that ultimately, deep down, rock bottom, all human obligations are tied into God's will.
That's where they come from. That's where they are ultimately ontologically grounded in God's will.
So I'm inclined to think that it's God's wish for us human creatures, it's his will for us human creatures, that we not just believe any old thing that pops into our heads, that there are norms for believing, that not anything goes, that there really are norms for believing. And if there are norms for believing, if they're connected to God's will, that's really just what rationality means here. It's just believing in accord with the norms, right?
That's just what it is.
It doesn't necessarily mean being terribly logical about, doesn't mean being terribly calculating about it. All it means is not violating the norms for believing.
That's what it is to have your beliefs be justified. That's what it is for them to be rational. It's to hold permitted beliefs. Permitted by whom? I think the Christian ultimately says permitted by God, not by other human beings, but by God. So I'd say that the Christian cares deeply about rationality. He sees himself as made by God with abilities to get in touch with truth, with reality.
And he thinks, and he thinks that we ought to use those right rather than badly, sloppily.
But now I want to give you a But yeah, Wes, it still seems.
[01:03:15] Speaker A: To me that this is a structure that fits reliability Scripture, for instance, better than it does say the notion of mercy. There's something terribly absurd about the notion of mercy, it seems to me.
I think it's part of.
[01:03:32] Speaker B: Maybe there's. Well, maybe there's not better than the.
[01:03:35] Speaker A: Rest of, albeit fairly important.
[01:03:39] Speaker B: So let me, so let me right away give you the but and I hope I can explain it.
So I think that rationality counts in beliefs.
And that's just, basically, that's just to say I don't think that anything goes in our beliefs. And if you agree to that, then what doesn't go is what's rational, permitted and justified and so forth. So if you agree with me that not anything goes, basically you, I mean, then you agree that some things are permitted in believings and some things not. So rationality in beliefs counts. But. And here's the but. It's not the only thing that counts in beliefs. It's not the only thing that counts in beliefs.
There are other things about our believings that count.
And maybe sometimes the other things are more important than the rationality.
Maybe sometimes the other things are more important.
It might even be.
It might even be that sometimes God asks us to believe things which it's not intellectually justified for us to believe when the evidence is against it.
How could that be? You say, oh, I think there's a biblical category for that. That's a trial.
It may just be that sometimes God puts his children under intellectual as well as other sorts of trial.
So you see the point though. Rationality counts, though governing a right, your belief to get in touch with reality count. There are other things that count.
[01:05:20] Speaker A: Does that mean like there's a thousand votes and there's 100 of them in and 60 of them are against?
[01:05:29] Speaker B: Yes, something like that. So that you've got to weigh it up, right?
Maybe outweighed by other considerations.
I can give you a homely example of that and maybe the homey example helps as much as anything.
I know enough about my ability or inability to figure out my, my checking account balance to know that I've really got to go over the figures at least twice.
And I know that if I go over it only once, unless I do it very slowly and carefully, if I go over it only once, I'm really not justified in believing with any firmness whatsoever that this is the balance.
I know enough about my abilities and so forth. That is if I, if I rightly shape my truth acquiring abilities, I know go over it at least twice now. I don't know. Suppose I'm living in Philadelphia last October, and here are the Phillies playing in their third time in the century World Series.
And I've got a young son and so I've got this obligation. Do I take him off to see the Phillies player? Do I spend more time calculating this bank account balance? Well, it might just be that I ought to whip through the bank account balance and dash off with him to see the Phillies play. Right. That's an obligation. That outweighs arriving at a fully justified belief about my checking account balance.
So arriving at justified beliefs isn't the only thing that counts. And sometimes it's not the most important thing that counts.
That's part of what you were getting at, Wes.
Here's one thing that counts. It's not the only one.
Those are some of the things I'd say about the first issue.
Does the charge which comes in. But you're believing irrationally.
Do you care about it? I think you care about it.
I don't think you care decisively and only and so forth about it. But one cares about it.
That's what I'm saying.
Especially when you see rationality as doing your duties by your believings.
Yeah.
[01:07:30] Speaker A: Is the rationality of the believer the same as the rationality of the non?
[01:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, yes and no.
That's.
That's not very helpful, is it?
I think the norms for the rationality. See, what we're really doing is conducting, it's now clear, a normative enterprise which. Which is what it was from the beginning. He comes in and says, you ought to give up such a belief. I think the norms are the same, though how people use their truth governing abilities varies vastly.
But the norms remain the same.
[01:08:02] Speaker C: Could you perhaps define that a little more closely? Because it seems to be crucial. I felt as if we skipped over.
[01:08:06] Speaker B: To being Christian norms.
[01:08:08] Speaker C: I'm glad you brought that up because to me, if we're going to give an answer to the evidentialist challenge, we need to speak on his terms and not just assume a Christian says on these things. I guess maybe I missed something or blinked and passed it over or something, but I'm not sure if I understand. When you sit in the worms of the Christian and the non Christian saying what you. Exactly. And I understand about the applications, but I'm not sure if everybody.
[01:08:32] Speaker B: Ah, see, see. But I.
Yeah, go ahead.
[01:08:38] Speaker A: The Holy Spirit is spirit. Truth.
[01:08:40] Speaker B: Pardon? Say it again.
[01:08:41] Speaker A: If the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth, truth can be known. Ma way of thinking. It's it's not merely optional.
[01:08:53] Speaker B: But is.
[01:08:54] Speaker A: In the vital link in the chain to acknowledge.
[01:08:59] Speaker B: Yeah, but now if we go back.
[01:09:02] Speaker A: To the question of norms and Paul put ar with the laughter over the eye of the concept of regenerative life after death, it seems to me that's a fairly good illustration of the two types of reason that the Christians reason transformed by his knowledge of the Lord. Is Abraham rational leaving or to go on this journey when he doesn't know where to go? Obviously the church of the world was full.
Are we then all fools as Paul says, you must be a fool for Christ. See that's.
Can we hold in on that for a minute?
[01:09:45] Speaker B: Over and over to my ear, where we're missing each other is on this. What I said is the rational, the justified belief is the belief that does not violate the norms. I didn't say does not violate what.
[01:09:56] Speaker A: We believe.
[01:09:59] Speaker B: To be the norms. I didn't say that.
Maybe that answers your question. I'm talking about what the actual norms are, not what you and I and an unbeliever and so forth believes the norms to be.
But what in fact you ought to believe.
Ah, that raises the anxious question how do you find out what you ought to believe?
But all the way through here I'm taking these norms as objective for this reason seems to me they're grounded in the will of God.
And that doesn't depend on what we believe about the will of God. It depends on what the will of God is.
That's why I say the very same norms apply to all humanity because God's will with respect to believings and the treatment of the earth and of other human beings and himself is the same for all humanity.
He lays the same claims on all of us.
He doesn't say, I'll be more relaxed about you people over here and more stringent with you people over here.
[01:10:55] Speaker A: Have you tried that out with a non believer?
[01:10:59] Speaker B: Well, assuming believing God, the whole issue.
[01:11:01] Speaker C: Here I think is I thought it was to discuss faith to begin with. And yet you're assuming, believing God that God is the right way in saying that his norms are right. And to me that assumption to a non believer, he has problems having faith and having belief to begin with and then to make him have to.
[01:11:23] Speaker B: So it's like using the word when.
[01:11:25] Speaker C: You, when you're trying to define a word. Is he using the word to define a word?
[01:11:28] Speaker B: No, I think all he's got to do so far is just agree that there are norms for believing he doesn't have to Add what I added namely that I think as a Christian that these norms are grounded in the will of God. All he's got to do to so far follow the argument is agree that not anything goes to fire Avent. I'd have to say a very different thing because he thinks that anything goes.
But if somebody says no, I really think there are some things you shouldn't believe. And of course that's exactly what the evidentialist holds because he charges into this whole thing saying you oughtn't to believe this. So he agrees that there are norms, we've got to talk about what they are and so forth.
But so far everybody in the conversation agrees that there are norms for believing.
Okay, now, yeah.
[01:12:22] Speaker A: Just to try to get an idea where we're going, maybe I'm off, but we're still differentiating very clearly between a belief and a trust.
[01:12:31] Speaker B: Or.
[01:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah, and that seems we have to go back to that step of is that trust logically followed or is there anything rational about trust in them?
[01:12:45] Speaker B: And what he wants to say is you shouldn't trust until you've got good evidence for the truth, for the truth.
[01:12:51] Speaker A: Of the belief, Belief out one level. And that seems to be into that core. You talk about, is it rational to have trust in something before you have a belief in it?
[01:13:04] Speaker B: Well, what he's really doing is saying it wouldn't be right of you to trust somebody, it wouldn't be right of you to trust in God unless it's right of you to believe that God exists and is good and is faithful and so forth. And then you want secondly to say, and I want to raise some questions about whether you're justified in believing that, whether it's rational or justified for you to believe that God exists and is good and faithful and so forth.
[01:13:30] Speaker A: You're saying once you get by this idea that there are things other than rationality which in influence beliefs, then we can make a step into that trust.
[01:13:40] Speaker B: While at the same time I want to say that I think the issue of doing one's duties by one's believings, which is what rationality I think comes to, that's an issue that the Christian takes seriously because he doesn't want to say that anything goes.
He doesn't want to say that anything goes, he takes it seriously.
And that it seems to me, is just what the rational belief amounts to, the one in accord with the norms for believing.
And we'll get to what I think those norms are.
[01:14:12] Speaker A: And you're going to say, how has this worked with non Christian Yeah. You're going to say that?
[01:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Right now, no, later.
Put a star in front of that one, too. Mike.
Yeah.
[01:14:26] Speaker A: You're talking then, it seems to me about evidential challenge or objection with someone who's willing to be consistent, that is that they demand evidence.
They're going to follow it all the way through and talk about norms and.
[01:14:44] Speaker B: Justify beliefs, because that's the kind of guy who's lodging his attack. Yeah.
[01:14:51] Speaker A: Okay. And yet I don't.
I don't think you'll find those people, at least.
[01:14:56] Speaker B: Well, the man on the street, I.
[01:14:58] Speaker A: Think anything goes is more.
Is more characteristic as far as.
As I say it. May I. I think anything goes with this man you're talking about. But anything goes is almost the logical consequence of the fact that you can't agree on what norms are. And therefore you say, why try? What's the difference? So you talk to kids today and you really get down to what they're thinking, and they're not evidential.
[01:15:35] Speaker B: See, I'm not sure about that. I mean, at least both Pahnenberg and Scriven, you know, the two people I gave you last time, they by no means think that anything goes.
I mean, because they've got this obligatory thing and they're laying down conditions for when it's right for you to believe and when it's not right for you to believe. The fellow that Paul was talking about last time, the scientist, by no means thinks that anything goes. He thinks that in the absence of evidence, Christians shouldn't hold their beliefs. How many people out on the street really think that anything goes when the crunch is down?
I'm very dubious about that. I guess I really think that deep in all humanity is the recognition that not everything goes.
They may like to think that anything goes in certain situations where their preferences are a certain way, of course, but when they want to attack the other person, they don't think that anything goes.
Yeah.
[01:16:32] Speaker A: Behavior, I think, is never determined completely either by rationality or preference. No, certainly not as an input on the rationality side. Now, that may not get someone where you'd like to see them go, but it's a contribution.
[01:16:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:44] Speaker A: That's really all you can say?
[01:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:47] Speaker A: Was Fire ever saying that about science or even like law of non contradiction?
[01:16:51] Speaker B: Well, he's got his eye on science, but he really means it. Concerning everything, anything goes, then he wouldn't.
[01:16:58] Speaker A: Have any grounds to disagree with the way he held the contrary.
[01:17:01] Speaker B: Of course not. The, you know, it's always. No, I mean, it's always such things Emerge as they do in fire album from long sustained arguments. And then you want to say, well, fire album. Do you think that anything goes along the course of this argument? Are you trying to persuade me of something? Do you think I ought to believe something as a result of your argument? Ought to believe something as a result of your argument.
So these ideas tend to be self referentially inconsistent.
One of the most vivid examples of that is in values clarification stuff. There's a book on values clarification which says that teachers and adults in general ought never to lay oughts and obligations on people. And it's the most hortatory book I've ever come across. The most preaching hortatory book I've ever come across. There's immensely hortatory sermons to get rid of exhortations.
[01:17:56] Speaker A: On this idea of. It seems like what you're saying sounded like a big begging of the question. But what I was thinking, anybody that's involved in an intellectual enterprise believes that there are some rooms somewhere. We may not have them now. It may have to be revived, revised. Revised. Otherwise it just seems like a hopeless.
[01:18:17] Speaker B: Exactly. I think so. And so maybe on first glance looks like a question begging thing, but. But basically what I've been saying is two things. It certainly doesn't beg the question for the evidentialist because he's laying oughts on people. Right.
And I don't really think it begs the question for most human beings. I doubt that most human beings really think that anything goes. They may want to think or say that they believe that anything goes when their own pleasure and delight is involved, but for the rest of the time not.
Yeah.
[01:18:53] Speaker A: It seems to me that Christian's participation in this kind of system of moral beliefs hinges to some extent again on the last phrase of whether the experience of the phenomenal world and one's own rational capacities and following that rule of vast actually leads to the truth that is God.
And if that data is to any extent unreliable in leading to God, then the Christian has to would have to opt out. And that's what I think you're getting at, is that yes, follow it. But there may be occasions in which the evidence is unreliable. And that's exactly where you're going to get criticized by the strong evidentiary criticism is he's going to say you're playing games with me. Because some of the times you're willing to follow the evidence of the phenomenal.
[01:19:47] Speaker B: Law, and some of the time you're not.
[01:19:48] Speaker A: And some of the time you're not. And every time it goes against you. You're saying you're not because you're going to believe in God anyway.
[01:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:19:58] Speaker A: Seems to me whether the Christian participates in that is the reliability of the phenomenal love is always pointing to God or not.
[01:20:06] Speaker B: That's exactly what, you know what Barth says.
You're misleading people in the conversation.
[01:20:14] Speaker C: Yeah, but I think what most of us would tend to fall back on is the fact that we know the evidence is there or will be there at some point in time. It's just that God hasn't revealed all the evidence to us and like a non believer assumes that all the evidence is there.
[01:20:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, actually now we're ready for what I think is the interesting point. I mean, these things are interesting and important, but I think the really interesting question is the one that I've got next, which we don't have time for tonight, namely this.
I'll pose it and then we'll get into it. It's the big one.
Is it true?
Is it true that if we use our truth obtaining abilities as well as we ought to, is it true that if we use our truth attaining abilities as well as we ought to that we won't accept the existence of God and so forth until we can infer it from adequate evidence?
Is it true that.
Here's the really interesting question. I think. Is it true that if we use our truth attaining abilities as well as we ought to, if we stick with justified rational beliefs and all that, but that comes to using your truth attaining abilities as well as you ought to.
If we do that, then is it true as the evidentialist claims? Is it true that we won't be theists, let alone Christians, that we won't be theists until we can infer that God exists and is good and all that from adequate evidence?
No, he means logically adequate evidence that.
[01:22:25] Speaker A: We won't accept it?
[01:22:28] Speaker B: Is it true?
Is it true that. So here's another way of putting it. Is it true? This is his big claim. Is it true that if we act rationally we won't accept theism until such time as we can infer it from adequate evidence?
There are lots of things we believe which we haven't inferred from other things that we believe?
Did that ever occur to you? Lots of them.
That should be the way it's got to be.
I can be the first one. That's really the way it's got to be.
So you infer P from Q.
Some other blank of yours.
Why do you believe P? Because I believe this other Thing. And I think that that is good evidence for P.
Why do you believe P? Well, I inferred that from R. You said. Splendid. Why do you believe R? Well, I infer that from some other yet some other belief. I've got S.
How long you want to carry it. Why do you believe S? Why inferred that from yet some other thing which I thought was good evidence for.
It seems evident that you got to begin at some.
We must have some beliefs which we didn't get from other beliefs.
What the philosophical tradition calls those is immediate beliefs.
Immediate ones. You didn't get them from other beliefs.
You say, how about some examples? I'll give you two simple examples.
Suppose on some occasion you feel dizzy.
Suppose you believe that you feel dizzy. I believe that sounds too weak to you. You accept that you feel dizzy. What did you infer it from? What other belief of yours did you infer it from?
I'm inclined to say there, look, hey, look, when I am dizzy and know that I'm dizzy, I don't. I don't infer it from something else. What I just am aware of being dizzy.
Or. Here's another one. Everybody in this room knows that either it's raining outside now or it's not the case that it's raining outside.
From what did you infer that?
The law of non contradiction. Oh, I suspect you knew things like that long before you ever heard about the law of non contradiction.
So I. Two things.
That's the way it's got to be. Many of our beliefs we didn't derive from other beliefs.
I think that's. You can sort of see that's the way it's got to be. And we've got lots of examples.
[01:24:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not a little bit like trying to find the beginning of a circle.
[01:24:57] Speaker B: It's like trying to find the beginning of a line. Straight line.
[01:25:00] Speaker A: Ah, but are we dealing with a line or a circle?
[01:25:02] Speaker B: Suppose it's a circle.
Think of what it would be like if it were a circle. I believe Q because I've inferred it from P because I've inferred it from Q and Q because I've inferred it from R and so forth.
It just looks evident that at some point you as a human being have to begin the process.
[01:25:18] Speaker A: We'll never find that point because that point always came from some previous point.
[01:25:21] Speaker B: Here's my suggestion. We've got lots of such points that we can cite as examples.
Put it like this. Our awareness of states of consciousness are things that we're just directly aware of.
[01:25:33] Speaker A: Pardon came to us from the learning process.
[01:25:36] Speaker B: But you didn't infer it from something. I mean, you acquired the concepts in some way. But on a given occasion, when you know that you're awake, there's always some.
[01:25:45] Speaker A: Proximate cause for that.
[01:25:49] Speaker B: See, I know that I'm awake. Now, from what other belief of mine did I infer that I'm awake?
[01:25:58] Speaker A: Past experience which led to a belief that in a certain condition you are awake.
[01:26:03] Speaker B: Yeah, but from what other belief now did I infer that I'm now awake?
What habit? What.
See, here's.
Here's. I think the thing we've got to reflect on some of our beliefs we derive from other beliefs. We say I believe this. Ah. And so I believe this other thing. Some of them we don't derive from other beliefs.
Now, that's really what the evidentialist also wants to say. As I'll indicate next time. Here's my real question that I want to put to you people.
Why shouldn't the belief that God exists be one of those?
Why shouldn't it be that we reason from the conviction that God exists? Why must it be that we have to first reason to it?
That's a way of putting the evidentialist issue.
What the evidentialist says is you have to reason to it.
Now, one thing that you might. That you might try saying in defense of the evidentialist is, well, that's because we reason to everything.
We better begin there next time because I think it can't be that we reason to everything. We've got to start some place from which we do our inferrings.
And why can't the conviction that God exists be a starting point?
Why must it be always something that you arrive at later?
[01:27:28] Speaker A: Why not Santa Claus also?
[01:27:30] Speaker B: So then one of the threats is the Pahnenberg Threat. And the Pahnenberg Threat, well, isn't that arbitrary?
And the Locke in threat. How do you cope with enthusiasts? So we better have an answer to that, right? I'll give you one.
Try to give you one.
[01:27:49] Speaker A: The proceeding was a presentation of the C.S. lewis Institute in the Legacy of C.S.
[01:27:54] Speaker B: Lewis.
[01:27:54] Speaker A: The institute endeavors to develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life. For more for more information, please visit our website at www.cslewisinstitute.org thank.
[01:28:18] Speaker B: You.
