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Various forms of Presupposition Theology have become all the rage with theists lately. The concept, simply put is that Christians must presuppose the truth of the Bible. Christians who subscribe to the presupposition concept tend to argue that atheists take reason as a presupposition and on faith. They further argue that reason presupposes a God. In other words, the reason for reason is God.
It is not uncommon to hear a Christian ask an atheist about the foundation of reason these days. Why do atheists presuppose that everything has a naturalistic, logical reason? In a recent discussion with a Christian friend this very topic came up. The question was asked, “Who created the laws of physics?” My Christian friend went on to say that science depends on the laws of physics remaining constant and so atheists have faith that this is the case.
Presupposition Theology puts a lot of the table so to speak. First and foremost however, Presupposition Theology is an admission by Christian apologists that Faith is not a virtue and is in fact a bad thing (a reversal of everything Christianity has preached for over 2000 years and continues to preach today). These apologists have then attempted to transfer their own burden of faith onto reason.
Second, those that hold to the Presupposition Theology don’t seem to understand how science works and why it is different from faith-based thinking. Science doesn’t depend on the laws of physics remaining constant; science observes that the laws of physics seem to be constant. If the laws of physics changed tomorrow, science would adapt and still try to understand and discover how the universe works.
Science points out that if the universe works a certain way, than we can expect to observe certain things. When we in fact observe those certain things, we can conclude that the laws of physics seem to be constant. Science doesn’t have an assumption of reason nor does it take reason to be true on faith. Reason is a tool that science uses. We use that tool because of its amazing predictive and adaptive abilities.
If a certain theory holds true than we ought to expect to observe certain things. If we don’t observe those things, then we alter the theory or scrap it completely. If we do observe those things, then we continue to observe. The more the theory’s predictions hold up, the stronger the theory becomes. Theories like gravity and evolution have a long track record of accurate predictions. They are examples of strong theories. We hold those theories to be true not on faith, but on their long track record of accurate predictions.
Reason needs no presupposition. If reason were to fail us, then we move on. As it happens, that has not occurred in all of recorded human history. Science doesn't depend on any presuppositions, because it isn't declaring Truth. Science is about exploring the natural world as accurately as we can. We can say that we know certain things with reasonable certainty because the evidence seems to indicate those things are the case and we can use our conclusions to accurately predict other facts about the world. But we might be wrong and for all we know, we might be just characters in some alien computer game.
As far as God creating reason that may very well be the case but to date there is no evidence to suggest that it is. We don’t really know why the laws of physics are what they are. If they were different, then we would no doubt be different or perhaps we wouldn’t exist at all to ask the question. All we can say is that we observe the laws of physics to be a certain way and based on those observations we can expect certain outcomes to occur and as a point of fact they do.
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Comments
Thanks Staks - great article! Very clear explanation. Makes me wonder how anyone could want to use anything other than reason and science to try to make sense of the world.
Greetings. It appears that presuppositional apologetics was not clearly explained to you. In short, a 'presupposition' is a set of irreducibly complex assumptions or beliefs that undergirds one's worldview. For an example in actual formal debate, google "bahnsen stein debate"--it's in audio or text format.
As for the underlining uniformity assumption of science as 'objective,' well-trained philosophers of science dispute this with the concept of theory-ladenness (at galilean-library.org & see Quine). Plus, there are various meta-theories of science (logical positivism, falsificationism, etc.) which atheist, etc. disagree among themselves. The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online)--look up 'belief' to understand its usage in more scholarly Christian circles.
Presuppositional apologetics doesn't appear to be that new to me. Christian apologists have been basing their claims on the presupposition that "God did it" since at least Thomas Aquinas and his "Quinque viae" or 5 proofs which requires you to presuppose that the Christian "God" could do those things that he claimed nothing else could have. Of course atheist call this circular reasoning, as you have to believe that "God" exists and could do those things to come to the conclusion that "God" did those things.
oh, and by the way Denver, "irreducibly complex" often isn't, and "theory-ladenness" is overcome by peer review (having multiple scientists studying the theory from multiple points of view as well as from different areas of scientific study).
Why do atheists have to refute everything. I'm a christian, I teach christian faith, but I don't constantly write, teach and criticize other beliefs. Hmmm...are you convincing yourself...
That's an interesting view Irvine, I think I will have to write an article about it in the future. To help you understand briefly, I guess you could ask why gay people are always trying to force equal rights on everyone else or why black people demanded on being treated as actual people or why women are all refuting the idea that men are superior to women as directed by God. In short, atheists like me are always refuting ridiculous beliefs whether they are Christian, Muslim, Scientologist, or some other ridiculous religion. But Christians do dominate the United States and in my view the Christian belief system is the most dangerous. So that is why most of my articles deal with Christianity over Islam. But I have gone after them too from time to time. I will be writing an article on this more fully soon.
Steve: So, if one leaky bucket will not hold water, combining more leaky buckets will hold water? Peer-review is a limited resource and does not bypass the fundamental problem faced and argued over by philosophers of science.
It is true that many people drive cars but can never rationally explain how the car operates. Thus, many scientists 'do' science but have no rational explanation that has not been challenged. The presuppositional challenge as explained by kant and others is decidedly different in kind than those examples you use (read, Stern's Transcendental arguments--a more accurate name).
The Christian presuppositional apologetic is a transcendental argument: the ontological trinity is the logical presupposition of all reality. Or more abstractly: A presupposes B if and only if: a) if A is true, then B is true; b) if ~A is true, then B is true. B is the ontological trinity. A is any part of reality.
Denver Christian Apologist, you have yet to answer any of the issues presented in this article about this topic. You restated Presupposition Theology, but haven't addressed any of the issues.
I don't accept the "leaky bucket" analogy at all. It would be more like observing a large 3 dimensional object. If one scientist were to observe it from only one point, he might miss significant parts of the view, but with many scientists looking at it from several different angles, and sharing their information with each other, they can come to understand all aspects of the object, even identify any illusions the first scientist might have missed.
One common thread among Christian apologists is to try to insist that things like logic and physical laws are "things" that must have some kind of source. Those things are simply how the universe works, and do not "exist" per se. They are only "laws" in the minds of human beings, and do not at all imply the existence of a creator, much less a specific creator.
I love your writing, and find it helpful in many cases. Please, let me help you to improve it. "If", "then", with an E, not than with an A. If you use proper English then people will not be able to dismiss your well thought out arguments based on grammar. If, then. "Than" with an A is used to compare one thing to another as in, "Atheism makes more sense than religion." Keep up the good work.
Great read Staks.
Worms crawl in, and worms crawl out, is simply to scary for some people to come to grips with. Until science comes up with the key to immortality, there are just too many reasons to believe the many myths of an afterlife.
Reason and science are doubted and rejected because religious leaders/parents convince their members/children that the supernatural is primary and the natural world is secondary.
you shouldn't call gravity and evolution theories, even scientific ones. they're facts.
They (gravity and evolution) are observed phenomenon that our scientific theories - general relativity, natural selection (The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis more specifically) attempt to explain through increasingly more accurate and precise predictions about the natural world. That gravity is constantly happening and that evolution has happened throughout the history of life on earth are facts.
You seem to miss the point of presuppositional theology.
The question isn't whether these things exist or not, the question is Why?
Why?
Your worldview provides no explanation, you live contradicting yourself. Biblical Christianity provides a worldview that fully explains Logic, uniformity of nature and moral absolutes.
Notice your statement.
"Reason needs no presupposition"
You are simply begging the question Why.
You have faith without reason. You have blind faith.
You live in a world with no answers for the very foundations you rely on. Then use the very foundations of logic from the bibical worldview to deny its truth.
I think I adequately addressed this in the article. Thanks.
Your arguments in the examiner article are rather unsophisticated and betray an almost total ignorance of the philosophy of science.
“Science doesn?t depend on the laws of physics remaining constant; science observes that the laws of physics seem to be constant”
Most philosophers of science from Carnap and Quine to Haack and Mayo would disagree with you. Their arguments would likely be over your head or would take far too long to communicate to the lay reader.
In a nutshell They would argue that nature requires some principle of the uniformity of nature. Without going into the voluminous reasons why they argue these positions briefly: if scientific theories were never corroborated there could be no ‘science’.
Fortunately for you however there are philosophers of science that would more or less agree with your position, the anti-inductivists. By far the most influential philosopher of science in that camp would be Karl Popper. But It was Popper who coined the phrase faith in reason:
“”The rationalist attitude is characterized by the importance it attaches to argument and experience. But neither logical argument nor experience can establish the rationalist attitude; for only those who are ready to consider argument or experience, and who have therefore adopted this attitude already, will be impressed by them.
That is to say, a rationalist attitude must be first adopted if any argument or
experience is to be effective, and it cannot therefore be based upon argument or
experience. (And this consideration is quite independent of the question whether or not there exist any convincing rational arguments which favour the adoption of the rationalist attitude.)
We have to conclude from this that no rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude. Thus a comprehensive rationalism is untenable.
But this means that whoever adopts the rationalist attitude does so because he has adopted, consciously or unconsciously, some proposal, or decision, or belief, or behavior; an adoption which may be called ‘irrational’.
Whether this adoption is tentative or leads to a settled habit, we may describe it as an irrational FAITH IN REASON. So rationalism is necessarily far from comprehensive or self-contained.”"
If you follow the development of anti-inductivism from Popper onward scientific knowledge becomes a form of “unjustified, untrue, unbelief”.
Again the history and arguments are far too complex to get into here but suffice to say that anti-inductivists that have tried to have a comprehensive rationalism that doesn’t rely on faith always smuggle in justification or induction (Musgrave), or create philosophies with internal contradictions (Bartley) or redefine science into something unrecognizable (Bayesians).
“Reason needs no presupposition. If reason were to fail us, then we move on. As it happens, that has not occurred in all of recorded human history.”
This is a SPECTACULARLY false statement. Reason fails us all the time as seem to suggest when you say theories are scrapped. But these are far from the worst examples think of all the centrally planned economies, lysenkoism, deriving an ought from an is, Social Darwinism and its cousin scientific racism to name a tiny few.
I suppose you could argue that people were reasoning imperfectly in those cases but in that case you must have faith in a platonic ideal of Perfect Reason. And there are a host of deep problems with such a notion. Google Ayer and Total Evidence for starters.
But even were your faith in perfect reason well-placed, the decisions with the best outcome are not always rational, just ask a lottery winner. The best that can be said even of Perfect Reason is that it will yield better results more often than irrational decision making. This is a far far cry from your statement.
“We can say that we know certain things with reasonable certainty because the evidenceseems to indicate those things are the case and we can use our conclusions to accurately predict other facts about the world”
An anti-inductivist CANNOT state this for we can only predict with reasonable certainty if we presuppose the future resembles the past i.e. INDUCTION.
If you’re going to try an teach people philosophy you should master the subject yourself BEFOREHAND.------------------------------------------------------
------------------------I wrote this to him and received this as a "response"
--Thanks for your comment. I am aware f what other philosophers have said and I have indeed “mastered” the subject, lol.
I stand by my article. Reason needs no presupposition. we reason because reason works. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive. That might be over your head, jk.
Reason has not failed us, reason is a process, not a single idea. There are bad ideas which have been derived from reason, but through reason we discovered that they were bad ideas. I think you oversimplified the concept of the reasoning process there.----------------
This is garbage. He did not respond at ALL to any criticism but merely repeats in FAITH the refrain "Reason has not failed us,"
I actually think I did respond to your comment there Francis. You have confused a descriptive process with a prescriptive process. You also attempted to pigeon whole reason into single ideas instead to viewing reason as a process. While I was joking that it might be over your head, since you made a similar statement, perhaps it actually is over your head. Thanks for playing.
So you're certain that there is no true certainty. I love how atheists think, ha. The faith of the atheist is great, but I must contend that one from the presuppositional persuasion doesn't think of faith as bad. Who told you this? This is antithetical to scripture, and is simply absurd to suggest. Maybe you ran into the ‘one guy’ who said this, I don't know, but faith is a reliance on God and what he has said in his revelation to man (i.e., the Bible). Faith need not be blind, but at its core it’s a reliance in what God has said. The good thing is that since what God said IS true we can substantiate it from our world, the way we think, the way we reason, etc.
Your core presupposition(s), which we all have, has significant roots in your psyche. It affects your worldview as well as your stated information on this thread. By saying, “Reason needs no presupposition” you contradict the very fabric of your statement. Your presupposition lies in your statement. You reason in order to say that reason has no presuppositions, yet you needed a presupposition to come to the conclusion about reason. You may think your thought patterns are composed of mere chemical reactions from the naturalistic universe, but if you thought that then nothing matters or means anything… you might as well be a nihilist. But your presuppositions influence how you see the world. Of course, in your world science in numero uno, and if science changes you’ll change (even though many scientists disagree on certain things like evolution, for instance – so who’s right, right?). That seems to be your message. So you’re not certain about anything except for the fact that the Christian is wrong (imagine if you said the Christian is right, what this would mean), though God may have in fact created reason. As an atheist, why even leave this option open… ? You’re just waiting for science to tell you that before you believe it, even though science “isn’t declaring the truth.” Are you seriously going to live your whole life knowing that you’ll never reach the truth? If your final authority is science then this will be the case. But I know of many good scientists who are Christians, so I believe you have a bit of a smoke screen up to the true issue. Even scripture states that the natural man will not understand the things of God, and that the natural man will think the things of God are foolish (1 Cor. 2:14). So Christians aren’t shocked that you feel this way. We just want to express the truth of Christ so you can know the truth before you meet your end. The psychology of atheism is found in the first two chapters of Romans.
The fundamental issue you may have with the presuppositional apologetic is the claim that you must borrow from theistic grounds in order to try to make sense of your naturalistic world. The laws that you speak of (e.g., physics) were here long before the scientific method. So man can now see these laws in action, which were already in place… great! You may ask how a scientist could be anything different than an atheist, agnostic, or skeptic. I ask how a scientist can see anything but an intelligent creator behind everything…
Wow! Well, you certainly put a lot on the table. But I am only going to address a few thing here. First, you really didn't understand my statement:
"Presupposition Theology is an admission by Christian apologists that Faith is not a virtue and is in fact a bad thing (a reversal of everything Christianity has preached for over 2000 years and continues to preach today). These apologists have then attempted to transfer their own burden of faith onto reason. "
Let me try to dumb it down for you. The claim is that atheists take reason on faith. If this were true (which it isn't) Why is this a problem? The only reason this would be a problem is if the apologist was admitting that faith is a bad thing. Because if faith were not a bad thing, then who cares if reason is taken on faith?
Second, reason is descriptive. We use reason because it works. We don't presuppose it, we observe it. If I did the same thing multiple times and got different results each time (without other factors), then we would see that reason doesn't work. We would not be able to predict the outcome of any of our actions. We wouldn't be able to do much of anything in our society because there would be no connection between cause and effect. However, we observe that there is a connection between cause and effect and through that we can reason. Everything in our society is a product of that reasoning. That reasoning is not a product of faith, but of observation.
"Science doesn’t depend on the laws of physics remaining constant; science observes that the laws of physics seem to be constant. If the laws of physics changed tomorrow, science would adapt and still try to understand and discover how the universe works."
Not true. Science can only "discover" if the object of it's study, the natural laws, lends themselves to be studied - patterns recognized and repeated. Chaos, the alternative to law, cannot be "studied". For example, you can forget about using the null hypothesis to help you determine anything.
Two words for you, Quantum Physics.
I would have like to see some examples of what the theory of evolution has predicted. I can certainly understand how the the theory of gravity can predict things; such as how long will it take a brick to hit the ground when dropped from 100 ft.
But what can the theory of evolution be used to predict? Maybe a new species evolve in the next 12 months?
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