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Since we just got through an election and most are still somewhat in a political mindset, I’ve wanted to write a little something clarifying just what the Conservative position is. Of course, immediately we have to acknowledge that there are many different people with many different political philosophies who all try to take the mantle of “Conservative” upon themselves. That is because, as polls during the latest election bear out, “Conservativism” is a “winning” label whereas “Liberalism” is a “losing” label. Indeed, more people claimed to be Conservative than claimed to be Republican in this election; however, far more people claimed to be Democrat than claimed to be Liberal. In other words, in terms of self-identification, Conservative and Democrat are both viewed favorably but Republican and Liberal are both viewed unfavorably.

While anyone can claim to be anything they want to be, I am not interested in those who claim to be something just because it is a winning label. So this post will examine the foundation of Conservative thought. It should be noted that it is certainly possible for someone to inconsistently hold to the major tenets of Conservative philosophy without agreeing to the foundational presuppositions that support it (e.g. many Libertarians on fiscal issues).

What is that foundation then? At first glance, we might be tempted to say it is human rights. That is, Conservativism is born out of a desire to be consistent with our Founding Father’s concepts of the rights of man. Why do Conservatives believe that lower taxes are better? It is not a pragmatic reason, such as how beneficial it is to our economy—even though it is indeed true that lower taxes are beneficial to the economy! It is because Conservatives believe that all human beings have the right to their own property. What I own is fully under my control to do with as I see fit, and no one—no government, no other individual—has the right to force me to do something with my property that I do not wish to do.

Furthermore, we can look at the Second Amendment. Why is it that Conservatives argue that the right to bear arms is something that cannot be taken away by the government? It is not simply because that’s what the Constitution says (although that is indeed what the Constitution says). It is because we have the right to life and liberty, and that means we have the right to protect our life and liberty.

But human rights need to be justified too. We cannot simply assert that they exist; we must argue for why they exist. And that means that, at its root, Conservativism is based not in human rights but upon theistic principals. And lest someone quibble, this is the actual reason given by the Fathers themselves. Before the Constitution was formed, the Colonists had to provide justification for why they threw off the yolk of England. If their rebellion was illegitimate, their Constitution was illegitimate too. That’s why they took such care to write the Declaration of Independence, to provide their reasoned argument as to why they were justified in breaking from England. The Declaration begins:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

The Declaration begins, in other words, by asserting that there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that entitle us to certain rights. Without Natural Law given by Nature’s God, there are no rights. And what are those rights?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principals and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So we see that our rights come, not from the whim of any man, but because we are endowed with them by our Creator. Furthermore, we see that Government is established “to secure these rights.” That is its primary purpose.

It should be noted that thus far we are not concerning ourselves with what aspect of theism fits. After all, while most of the Founding Fathers were Christians and the culture was definitely shaped by Christianity, there were also many Fathers who were only deists, and there were even some atheists who signed on. It is beyond the scope of this post for me to go into the reasons why Christianity provides the strongest rationale for these rights in comparison to other religions. Instead, I will focus briefly on why atheism cannot give us these same human rights.

If we take away rights endowed by our Creator, how do we establish those rights as actual rights? We cannot do so in any manner that escapes arbitrary decrees. For example, it might be argued that our intellect is what gives us those rights; that because man is the rational animal, he has human rights. But if we say that, then those who are more intelligent must have more human rights than those who are less intelligent. If the foundation of our rights is based on intellect, then this is inescapable: the geniuses have more rights than the imbeciles.

Yet we instinctively know that it is not the case that smarter people have more rights. We know that intellect is not a philosophically meaningful distinction when determining rights. We cannot keep someone enslaved, away from education, and claim that we have not violated his rights because we are smarter than he is.

If we instead argue that just as the Fathers said that Government derives its power “from the consent of the governed” our rights come from the consent of humanity as a whole then we still have not escaped the problem. After all, not all humans give the same consent. To cite the overly-used, yet crystal clear analogy: Nazis did not consider Jews to have human rights. We did not consider the Nazis to have the right to act consistently with those principals. Which view is right?

Under the position that the consent of the people determines human rights, neither position is right or wrong. We have two groups of people who disagree; there is no consent as to whether Jews have rights. Therefore, what prevails is nothing but might makes right. Nazis were wrong not because they were philosophically wrong but only because they lost World War II. If the Allies had been weaker, the consent of the world would have been that Jews are not human.

Once again, that concept is alien to us. Philosophically, our rights do not change simply because the whims of a group of individuals have changed. This is not a meaningful reason for our rights to change. Or rather, if it is a meaningful reason then our rights are worthless.

Human rights require a transcendent truth. They require objective truth that all men are, as part of their very being, deserving of specific rights. These rights cannot arise from nature alone. Evolution cannot explain how these rights got there, for man is but one evolutionary branch of billions. There is nothing that distinguishes man amongst the animals other than intellect, and as we’ve seen that would result in the smarter people having more human rights than the unintelligent. The only possible way we can have unalienable rights is if something higher than ourselves has given them to us.

Human rights come about because of the ontology of the human. We recognize them because of our being, not because of anything granted by any government or any group of people. It is precisely because these things do not depend on our size, location, level of development, sex, race, or beliefs that “all men are created equal” is true. That equality is found in our human ontology, and that comes about because man is created in the image of God.

With this in mind, we can sum up the basic Conservative ideology. Man has been endowed with the rights of Life, Liberty, and property (understood as the pursuit of happiness). These rights are God-given rights, not Government-granted rights. As such, any Government that would deprive anyone of those rights without proper justification is an unjust Government. The role of Government is to secure those rights for those who are governed. This means that the Government does have the right to tax its citizens consistent with securing those rights; but any taxes that are not consistent with securing those rights are unjustly depriving citizens of property. This means that Government has the right to defend our country from enemies, both domestic and foreign, by creating a police force and army; but it also means that Government cannot interfere with our own actions to secure our freedoms too (such as our right to bear arms).

Unfortunately, life is never as cut and dried as bare-bones philosophy will make it. To use an easy example, was the War in Iraq based on Conservative principals? It depends to a large extent on whether you believe the War is an attempt to secure our right to Life that terrorists seek to deprive of us. Insofar as we have not had another terrorist attack on America since 9/11, it is quite possibly due to the fact that we are engaging the enemy overseas. This would be consistent with the Government defending us from attack. On the other hand, it is also possible that the terrorists would not have been capable of another attack even had we left Iraq alone. That would make the War in Iraq unnecessary to secure out freedoms in America.

The net result is that it is quite possible for Conservatives to support or not support the War in Iraq and still remain Conservative.

On the other hand, consider abortion on demand (as opposed to abortion to save the life of the mother). Since human rights are based on our humanity, not any concept of “personhood” or the location of the human being or the developmental status, then the Conservative position must always be against abortion on demand. The unborn is a human being; that is the only thing that human beings can create via reproduction. The unborn therefore has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

On the other hand, abortion to save the life of the mother is not against Conservative principals because in that case the objective is not to deprive the life of the unborn, but to save the life of the mother. The unintended consequence is the unborn child also dies. We ought to do whatever we can to minimize the possibility of the death of the unborn, but when it is inevitable it is not against Conservative ideals to support abortion in those cases.

One final word should be noted. It is certainly possible for someone to be Conservative on some issues and not on others. People are, by and large, inconsistent. They tend to have a hodge-podge of beliefs, many of them contradictory, that they subscribe to. So it is possible that someone can be a fiscal Conservative while not being a social Conservative. But the logic of Conservative thought does boil down to our God-given rights, and therefore one is justified in weighing whether any particular issue coheres to those presuppositions. Since people can be (and often are) inconsistent, it should be no surprise at all that there is a wide range of belief amongst those who would call themselves Conservative; but that is no grounds to say that we should accept all those positions as being equally Conservative. Nor is the existence of those contradictory people evidence that Conservativism itself is incoherent or lacks a real presupposition.

One of the things I enjoy most about Triablogue is that we’re not monolithic. Each of us is a separate individual who has his own perspective on various issues. While there is great overlap amongst us, there is also quite a bit of diversity.

I bring that up because I’ve recently been reading over some essays penned by a presuppositionalist who argued that presuppositionalism is the only valid apologetic method. Now, as a presuppositionalist myself, I believe this statement is true in a very limited sense. That is, I believe that those who would use evidentialist approaches to apologetics also rely on presuppositions that they just don’t express. As a result, you cannot escape the fact that at the ultimate level you will need to deal with presuppositions.

However, that is not what this individual meant (note: this is a person I know locally and what I read is not posted anywhere online, so I’m not going to use his name). What he meant was that those who would use an approach different from the presuppositional approach were, in fact, sinning by doing so.

This view saddens me, much like the hypercalvinist view does. In fact, I think that this may be just an example of what James White termed the “cage stage” (only here it applies to someone who just read Bahnsen for the first time rather than a new convert to Calvinism).

This strikes at the heart of apologetics. Apologetics requires us to make a defense for any who should ask. And the fact is that while presuppositionalism is philosophically sound, it probably only works well at converting INTP personalities (a personality type of which I should note only about 2% of Americans are, at least according to the random website I just Googled…). Regardless of the actual percentage, it’s quite apparent that most people couldn’t care less about philosophy.

However, they are drawn toward evidentialist arguments. And while these arguments will never be as “air tight” (as far as the presuppositionalist is concerned) they are often more convincing precisely because they are easier to understand and follow. Jason Engwer does an excellent job at expounding on the evidence for Christianity in such a manner.

But that would just mean that evidentialism is pragmatic, not necessarily that it is not sinful. I would point out, however, that the Bible does use evidential arguments from time to time too. For instance, when Scripture says in Psalm 19:1 that the heavens declare the glory of God, David is referring to how God’s glory is manifested in nature. It is evidenced by nature itself. And Paul echoes that in Romans 1 as well, saying that God’s attributes are seen in what has been made.

Romans 1, by the way, is a beautiful illustration of the wedding of presuppositional thought to evidentialism. That is, we have the fact that the unbelievers refuse to accept what is plainly seen, and what is plainly seen is the evidence found in creation.

That evidence is there. If you offer an evidential claim, you have a reason to do so. Likewise, we know that no amount of evidence is sufficient in and of itself to convince a non-believer of the truth of God. Both must be taken into account.

In my experience, presuppositionalism works best at demonstrating that atheists have no philosophical standing (although see my caveat below). But when dealing with non-atheist, those who accept supernatural concepts and are not limited to materialism, then presuppositionalism is nowhere near as strong as evidentialism. This isn’t to say that presuppositionalism is impotent; just that it is more difficult to employ. To give an example, one could argue philosophically why it is impossible that Tom murdered Fred because of Tom’s nature; but it’s simpler to show the photograph of Tom on vacation in England at the exact same moment that Fred was murdered in Detroit. In the same way, one could argue that the plurality of gods in Mormonism would render the world senseless, but it’s easier to demonstrate historically that Joseph Smith was a conman.

Now for my caveat. When I said that presuppositionalism works best at demonstrating atheists have no philosophical background, it’s not strictly precise. That’s because in reality, presuppositionalism works best when it’s looking at the worldview level. This is most often expressed when dealing with atheists because their worldview is so diametrically opposed to Christianity on all fronts; however, if we got to the level of a worldview (i.e., determining what was appropriate evidence in the first place), then presuppositionalism would flourish against any religious view too. That is, once the unbeliever sees that the evidence is against his position, he will have to retreat to redefine what evidence is or jettison his view. At this point, the presuppositional argument must come into play.

When it comes to apologetics, therefore, I have observed the following (whether it is universal I know not, although it’s certainly widespread here in America). The average person does not care for philosophy, and therefore will be more impacted by an evidentialist apologetic. Those who are most vocal in opposition to Christianity, however, do focus more on philosophy because they’ve moved to the point where the very definition of “evidence” is determined, and those people will be more impacted by a presuppositional argument. In the apologetic setting that T-Blog is usually engaged in (that is, actively engaged with non-believers who are openly hostile to Christianity), presuppositionalism is probably the more effective tool. However, when you’re talking to the average person off the street and evangelizing, evidentialism is probably the more effective tool. (These are generalizations, and not everyone we deal with is a die-hard anti-Christian; T-Blog also provides pastoral posts from time to time.)

One final note. God draws His elect through both methods. There are countless saved by evidential arguments, and there are likewise countless saved by presuppositional arguments (although probably not as many in the latter group). It is not a sin to use an evidential argument. But it is a sin to think that it would be a sin to use an evidential argument. Apologetics must be person-relative. What God uses to convince one sheep to return to the fold is not necessarily what He will use to convince another sheep to return to the fold. God made each of us, and to cite the above (albeit questionable) statistic about the percentage of INTPs in America, God created both INTPs and ESFJs.

Some have made the claim that it is irrational to believe in a mind separate from the brain. The materialist argues that there is no real mind because everything reduces to a tangible physical object. Thus, our consciousness is merely a by-product of electrochemical reactions in the brain. Duelists, on the other hand, believe that there is a distinction between the brain and the mind. That is, while the mind most certainly is linked to the brain, the physical attributes of the brain are not the totality of the mind.

This post will not delve deeply into these subjects, nor will it attempt to prove one position over the other. Instead, I want to ask a more basic question: Suppose that we grant the materialist claims as they regard the empirical dimensions that we experience on a daily basis. Is it irrational, under that system, to believe there is a mental aspect that is separate from the empirical brain?

I should point out that I am asking a very narrow question. I am not asking what the likelihood of such a mind would be. I am merely asking whether an immaterial mental realm is actually incompatible with the materialistic worldview. If it is not—if mental existence remains viable even under materialistic concepts—then the materialist’s claim that belief in the separation of mind and brain is irrational is itself irrational, because even granting everything the materialist is forced to concede the possibility of the immaterial mental dimension.

As one might be able to surmise from the use of the term “dimension” I will begin by examining a planiverse. The planiverse is just like our universe, except instead of existing in three dimensions the planiverse exists in only two dimensions (i.e., a plane—hence, the planiverse). Compressing dimensions in this manner helps us to visualize the effects of added dimensions since each of us are able to view two dimensional representations using our three dimensional empirical faculties. If the mental dimension exists, it would be a fourth (or higher) dimension; therefore, if we examine how a three dimensional object would appear to a two dimensional observer, that can yield information as to how an extra-dimensional object would appear to a three dimensional observer such as ourselves.

To think of the planiverse go no further than getting a piece of paper. Let us stipulate that the piece of paper is the entire planiverse. Nothing exists beyond the edge of the paper, just as we believe nothing exists beyond the edge of our universe. Now draw a circle on the paper with a radius of, say, one inch. That is our two-dimensional observer. This circle cannot view depth: it can only view length and width. Therefore, if you had another circle that approached the first circle, it must go around the circle or else through the circle—it cannot go over the circle (i.e. “stacking”) because that requires the third dimension.

Because of that requirement, however, interesting things can occur. Place a coffee cup on your piece of paper. The coffee cup is three dimensional. The circle, however, only sees the portion of the coffee cup that exists in the plane of the piece of paper (for the sake of argument, we will say that the layer of the coffee cup that touches the paper moves into the plane of the circle so that it would become visible to our observer). The circle would view the coffee cup as another circular object rather than as a “cup-shaped” object.

We, however, as three dimensional observers can see that the coffee cup extends beyond what is observable in the two dimensions that the circle can see. Now, if you were to grab the top of the cup and push it from one edge of the planiverse to the other edge (without going through the circle so as to not terrify our observer!), the circle would observe another circular object move through the planiverse. However, the observer would be unable to find what caused the movement. The forces occurred in the third dimension, not in the two dimensions the circle has access to.

With this example in mind, we can extrapolate back to the three dimensions. If a mental dimension exists in, say, the fourth dimension, then immaterial consciousness could be just as much a physical object as a three dimensional coffee cup is physical even if a two dimensional observer cannot see it in its entirety. If the mental object in the higher dimension is really a physical object then it remains a material object. While it exists “above” the three dimensional space so that it cannot be empirically viewed as such, it nevertheless remains just as materialistic as a rock in three dimensions because there is nothing “special” about it. It just happens to exist in a different dimension than what we can observe.

Furthermore, it is easy to imagine that this fourth dimensional physical object is connected to an object that we can view in three dimensional space just as the circle of the coffee cup that broke the plane of the planiverse existed as a full physical object in three dimensions connected to the two dimensional observable existence. A fourth dimensional object therefore can exist fully in three dimensions just as well as it exists in the fourth dimension. But three dimensional observers can only view the portion that occurs in three dimensional space. Nevertheless, the object remains purely materialistic in nature. There is nothing supernatural about it at all. Therefore, no rules of materialism have been violated.

Finally, we can argue that if the portion that exists in the fourth dimension can exert force to cause effects to occur in the three dimensional portion of the object, then we have all that we need to prove the possibility of a materialistic mental realm.

Let us put this in a concrete example then. Take an average human being. Let us stipulate that in addition to the body that we see in three dimensional space there also exists a fourth dimensional aspect to that person which is the mind. This mind is physically attached to the three dimensional body; it cannot be removed from it naturally. Furthermore, this mind is where all the “thoughts” of the individual reside, all the motives and impulses, and dreams.

Because this fourth dimensional object is physically linked this means that the mind can influence the body. It has direct access to it. It cannot be seen in the three dimensional realm (just as hovering an atom’s width above the circle in the planiverse renders you invisible to the circle), yet the connection is there. When you think, therefore, even though this is something that occurs in the fourth dimensional aspect of your being, it manifests itself in your body as well. You brain has certain electrical and chemical changes that result.

Likewise, one can reverse the normal flow. One can stimulate certain portions of the brain and cause changes in the fourth dimensional portion of the being. What the brain “sees” remains locked away in the fourth dimension, yet there is a physical link to the three dimensions that are observable.

This idea would obviously work even under a materialistic universe. It is therefore not accurate to say that an immaterial mental dimension is irrational, even if we grant every single presupposition of the materialist. But there is something else that this theory has to make it even more robust. It explains phenomena that are quite difficult to explain under the usual materialistic theories. Just a few examples would include out of body experiences, near death experiences, astral projection, and the like. While it is obvious that not every claim of such experiences can be substantiated, there is enough evidence of people who have been clinically dead who can describe things that occurred in different areas of the hospital that they had no access to (for example) that not all claims can be easily dismissed as hoaxes, and it stretches credibility to assume voices that no one except the person who was clinically dead could hear bounced through the heating vents!

This is not problematic if the fourth dimensional aspect of a human being (the mind) can survive for even limited amounts of time if “severed” from the three dimensional body (just as severing an arm will not instantly kill the arm, and it can later be reattached).

Given all of this, even if it cannot be proven true (and even if we say it’s not even likely to be true), the materialist cannot claim that the mental dimension is irrational. It could exist even under materialistic premises.

The direct theological implication of this is that we instantly have a possible explanation for the spiritual realm as well. A spiritual realm could exist in the fourth dimension (or any higher dimension) and be rendered invisible to us. But while atheists like to claim that a spiritual entity cannot interact with a physical object, we can see that objects that exist fourth dimensionally can interact with physical objects if the physical objects in the three empirical dimensions also have existence in the fourth dimension (all without violating any rules of materialism). Naturally, I’m not arguing that this actually is how the spiritual realm exists; however, the materialist’s claim that it is irrational to hold to the existence of such a realm is disproven by this possibility alone. It is not irrational at all, even given all the claims of materialism.

Since the fine folks over at BHT have suffered a complete meltdown (despite what you’re thinking, this happened years ago—the effects are merely continuing through today) and do not allow thinking on their blog, it is rather fun to argue with them. It’s not much unlike discussing anything with any other liberal. You give them a fact and they emote. You give them reason, they whine. I did honestly try to see things from their point of view, but I just couldn’t get my head that far up my rectum.

Steve and I have offered several posts on prayer since Ted Kennedy was touched by an angel. We’ve actually put forth exegesis of Scripture as well as logical arguments using propositions. The response that BHT has given us is less than underwhelming.

In comments on this post, Randy McRoberts of the BHT said:

The thing is, Peter, that you don’t realize that arguments don’t always matter. It’s character and integrity and love that matter more. You can win arguments all day long against me. So what? You can speak with the tongue of men and angels, too, for all I care.

I don’t care to mount an argument. That’s not what I’m all about. If it works for you, have a ball with it. Don’t expect most people to care a whole lot. You might win the argument, but it’s an empty win.

Think about that for a moment. Randy has admitted that he doesn’t care about thinking, about intellectual consistency, about truth. It’s all about “character and integrity and love” not whether or not you’re actually, you know, correct and all. Mormons probably feel the same way, and I have to say they’re a heck of a lot nicer than the BHT folks are.

Reality has this weird property though. It’s real. It doesn’t change because you’re a nice person. It doesn’t change because you feel warm fuzzies.

So I responded with the following parable:

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Randy. Randy loved everyone and everything as much as possible. If his cruel, cold-hearted Dad was about to crush a spider, Randy would rescue the spider and lovingly toss it outdoors where it had a chance to live.

One day, an early spring day, Randy was walking down the sidewalk with his evil father when they saw a baby bird lying on the ground. It had obviously fallen from its nest.

“Leave it,” the wicked adult said. “It’s mother will come for it.”

But that was unacceptable for Randy, who loved the poor little bird. So when the demon-in-human-form wasn’t looking, Randy scooped up the baby bird and put it in his pocket.

When they got home, Randy rushed straight to his room. He took out the bird and placed it in an old shoe box. The bird chirped because it was very hungry. So Randy decided to feed the bird.

He asked his less-wicked-but-still-not-quite-loving-because-she-was-a-Presbyterian mother what baby birds ate. She said they ate worms. But Randy knew that couldn’t be the case–worms were icky little creatures (that still deserved to live, mind you–that was why Randy would rescue them before his diabolical father went fishing).

There was a better solution. Randy liked Butterfinger candybars and Dr Pepper to wash them down with. They were his favorite treats. Because he loved the bird so much, Randy shared his favorite things with the bird.

The next morning he awoke to find a very dead bird in the shoe box. Because, you see, poor Randy never grasped the concept that love without knowledge is dangerous. If you love someone or something but you have no clue what they need then you will not be able to satisfy their needs and your love will condemn them to death.

Sadly, this episode did not teach Randy his lesson. Later, he would grow up to believe that it did not matter if a sinner was hell-bound. The important thing was the love them, not to argue with them. The important thing was to make sure the had a sugar buzz before they spent eternity in hell.

And as a result, Randy decided to attack those who were trying to rescue sinners by calling those apologists intellectual elitists in a Big-Brained Blog. And lo, he felt good about himself, and those who were hell-bound enjoyed his taunts. And merrily they continued on the path to destruction.

At least on the day of judgment Randy can say, “I loved everyone I ever put in hell, unlike those bastards at Triablogue who actually convinced a few sinners to change direction by using arguments.”

Naturally, Randy didn’t bother to respond to this here on the T-Blog because he’s a coward and knows he’d get shredded. Instead, he retreated to the BHT (where comments are not allowed because Groupthink must prevail) and whined:

This is a response to a comment I made over there. (Should have known better.) See? I have love, but no knowledge. I’m putting people in hell by loving them. I don’t know what birds eat. I’m attacking those who rescue sinners by arguing with them. I feel good about myself for all this. I’ve learned a lot about myself today.

I don’t think it would take more than about three verses of “Just As I Am” to get me down front. I feel so bad about myself for feeling so good about myself.

Oh, yeah. In another comment I learned that for me to say that there are other ways to converse without putting forth an argument is “in itself an argument”. Now, that’s heavy. I’m not sure I get it, since I’m not intellectual at all.

Well it is obvious that Randy is no intellectual since he cannot grasp a simple parable. Instead, he thinks he needs to read everything literally. Frankly, I would be ashamed to speak in public if I was as dumb as Randy brags about being.

But to clear up the record, when Randy says “I have love, but no knowledge” he is wrong. He has just as much love as he has knowledge: none.

I, for one, have never read a loving remark from Randy about me. No, I just get his hate poured out upon me. (These are the same people who complain about us when we debate Arminians because “we should treat brothers in Christ better than non-believers” yet they have no qualms treating the “TR”, as they call us, as badly as possible. Then again, you shouldn’t expect consistency from those who hate intelligence in the first place.)

Secondly, I wouldn’t say that Randy is attacking apologists by arguing with us because nothing Randy’s ever said could be misconstrued as an argument.

Naturally, the other bored skulls acted shocked by what went on. For instance, JS Bangs said:

Wow. I mean, wow.

To which I respond: “Like totally! I mean, TOTALLY!

Bangs continued:

What exactly gave any of them the impression that we don’t care about the salvation of the lost?

The fact that you’re not trying to convince the lost they’re on the wrong path is a great indication that you don’t care where they’re headed. Then again, I use logic.

The fact that several people admitted they had trouble grokking the concept of Hell?

Well, it is kinda hard to see how someone not going to Hell needs to worry about going to Hell. Then again, I use logic.

Or the fact that we actually pray for the unsaved?

Except I don’t believe you. You claim to pray for the unsaved, yet you do everything in your power to impede those who are seeking the unsaved. What exactly do you pray regarding the unsaved? And frankly a general prayer “Lord save the unsaved” is no substitute for genuine prayer either. Then again, I use logic.

I have zero interest in reading any TR blogs, so I honestly don’t know what they’re trying to say.

And this, of course, is the first sign that you’re dealing with a moron. Ask questions, and then say, “I’m not going to listen to the answer.” This works when you’re three years old, but we expect more from adults. Then again, I use logic.

Not content to leave it at that, Strawfoot said:

Is he actually saying that he and his BBB fellows have actually talked people into becoming Christians?

Yes, I am.

WHAT?! How can this be? Well, Strawfoot, it’s really quite simple if you actually cared about what the wicked TRs believed (which you don’t, cuz God forbid you’d actually have to talk with one!). God uses…are you ready for this now?…MEANS to enact His will.

I know, revolutionary concept. Not found in any Reformed literature except for all of it.

And since I get e-mails sent to me, I know that there do indeed exist people who’ve been convinced of the truth of Christianity by way of some of the arguments that I’ve presented. God’s used me to bring some to Himself, and I am honored to be of use to Him.

The BHT is a great example of what happens when Politically Correct thinking runs amok. They preach tolerance by being intolerant of everyone who disagrees with them. They teach that love is most important by being as unloving as possible toward other Christians. They think that something’s wrong with you if you use the brain God gave you.

Frankly, if their version of Christianity was true, I’d be an atheist. And that’s something that Randy and other BHTers don’t get. They think that everyone is as emotive as they are and that no one cares about thinking correctly. But I do. My mere existence refutes their notion that everyone agrees with them. I do enjoy thinking, I am intellectually oriented, I do study, I do use my brain. And because of that, I can actually interact with the atheists in our world who are likewise intellectually oriented.

That’s something that none of Randy’s self-serving emotive bleating will ever be able to accomplish.

I just read this article about a family who tried to abort a “weaker” twin who refused to die. Now I could go on about certain aspects of that, but what I want to focus on here is this stupid statement by the mother:

It really is a miracle. Doctors carried out an operation to let Gabriel die – yet he hung on.

Did you catch that? “Doctors carried out an operation to let Gabriel die“…to let him die????

I suppose if I ever kill someone I can stand before the judge and say, “Your honor, I simply pulled the trigger/cut the throat/poisoned the food of the victim to let the victim die. I didn’t actually do anything. It was all passive.”

This statement by Mrs. Jones is nothing but a rationalization of abortion by making it seem passive instead of admitting it is the active killing of the unborn. We see the same exact terminology used in euthenasia cases too. “We’ll pull the feeding tube and let the patient die. It’s what they would have wanted.”

All this begs the point that anyone who deprives another person of food will CAUSE that person die. Anyone who engages in activities that will cause the death of another human being is not “letting” death occur, it is causing death to occur.

Words have meaning. The fact that this woman felt pricked in her conscious enough for her to twist her words from an active killing to a passive allowing of a death demonstrates that she knows in her heart that what the doctors were doing was wrong. If the doctor’s decision is not morally suspect, there is no reason to pretend that what the doctors do is to permit a death instead of causing the death.

Or should we just say he’s a more consistent secular humanist than most other secular humanists?

This is the problem when people want the result of a Biblical worldview (“For there is neither Greek nor Jew…”) without believing in a Biblical worldview. If you are a materialist, like Watson is, the end result is that you have to be consistent to your materialistic view. And materialism cannot account for universal human rights. There are no rights at all. No one is “created” equal at all. And there is no moral reason not to discriminate if need be.

Thus you can make blanket statements that whites are more intelligent than blacks (usually “softened” by claiming blacks are more athletic than whites–but everyone knows brains over brawn…you know, like how the dinosaurs died because they were big and stupid but mammals lived because they were small and smart? etc.). There is no reason not to because the small sample that Watson has looked at fits this mould.

Further, Watson would like for us to ensure the bottom 10% of people (the really stupid people) can’t breed, so that the gene pool becomes better. This is the inevitable result of rational self-interest combined with evolutionary ethics. If we want to evolve to better individuals, we have to become less altruistic and we have to weed out the weaklings.

Ignore all references to Hitler at this point, of course. All that matters is that we can define “most fit” as “most like me.”

Again, this is par for the course for secularists. This is what they are logically reduced to because there is no rational basis for any type of ethics in a materialistic worldview. There is no one created in the image of God, and therefore there is no reason to respect humanity any more than you’d respect the chemical reaction in a bottle of vinegar mixed with baking soda. Both are nothing more than events that occur. The meaning to the events are assigned subjectively by individuals, and if those subjective individuals decide that certain traits are undesireable enough to kill over, there is no higher standard to say that these conclusions are wrong. This is the inevitable result of secular humanism. This is what happens when secular humanists believe their philosophy.

And this is why Christians are obligated to promote an alternative worldview–the Biblical worldview.

I read through The dangers of creationism in education, also known as Doc. 11375 (17-SEP-2007) from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (HT: James White). There are many flaws in this document, which makes it difficult for me to know where to begin.

First: some general impressions. This document was extremely frustrating for me to read. I am currently at work on a project examining Darwinism myself. My philosophy is simple: if Darwinism is false, there is no need for me to refute the weakest arguments of Darwinism. I can fully handle the strongest claims Darwinists make. As a result, my goal has been to familiarize myself as much as possible with the current ideas of Darwinian evolution. In fact, my desire would be that any die-hard Darwinist would be able to take the first half of my project (the part that defines Darwinism) and say, “Yes, this is what modern Darwinism teaches.” The goal would be for Richard Dawkins himself to be able to admit everything in the first part is accurately portrayed. Only then would I critique Darwinism.

As a result, I hold myself to the standard of actually reading and interacting with the best arguments that the opposing side has to offer in the debate over Creationism and Darwinism. The Council of Europe, on the other hand, doesn’t even try to interact with the worst arguments ever brought forth by Creationists. Instead, we are treated to outlandish claims that Creationism will lead toward human rights abuses, and similar propaganda. And make no mistake, that is all that this document is: propaganda for religious naturalism.

Because of this, I actually have some reservations about responding to this document. It’s not the best argument for Darwinism, and as a result any effort that I would spend refuting some of the nonsense put forth could be countered by Darwinists who say, “You’ve got a point with this document, but you really need to look at what Mayr said about this issue instead…” etc. As a result, I will leave the critique of evolution itself alone (unless anyone who reads it and responds in the comments has anything specific they’d like for me to address), and instead focus on the misrepresentation of science and Creationism found in this document.

The first claim of the document is found in the summary:

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.

Creationism “is not based on facts” seems particularly ironic since later on in this document (paragraph 84), the writers complain:

By only presenting facts without any theory or proof, Harun Yahya abuses the credulity of individuals who listen to him or read his works.

So the Creationism that begins with being “not based on facts” suddenly becomes only “facts without any theory or proof” later on. When the goalposts are shifting this much, it’s obvious the document is biased.

But the first quote also says that Creationism “does not use any scientific reasoning” and lumps in intelligent design (ID) with this claim. This is so absurd it can only be outright dishonesty or sheer stupidity. To take just one example, Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe is filled with lots of scientific facts, theories, and proofs. Even if one were to disagree with Behe’s conclusions, one has to admit that he is a scientist and is looking at biochemistry, a scientific discipline. Further, the concept of design itself is scientific: this is why we have forensic science, after all. If you find a dead body, the first thing you have to establish was whether the death was natural or by design. With forensics, we can also determine to a great extent who the designer was. The science of design is scientific; and there are many Creationists who are scientists. To say Creationism “does not use any scientific reasoning” is simply flat out false.

The next problem we see is that this document seems to think that Creationism came about as a response to Darwinism, for they write in paragraph 2 of the Draft resolution:

Creationism, born of the denial of the evolution of species through natural selection, was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon (emphasis added).

And in paragraphs 2 and 8 of the Report of Mr Guy Lengagne (revised) we read:

As creationism is first of all a reaction to the theory of evolution, it appeared important to describe this theory.

…

Creationism thus came about in opposition to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

One cannot help but laugh at such absurd reasoning. One is tempted to conclude the Council of Europe thinks that Genesis was written in 1860 because someone had to counter the devastating claims of Darwin. In fact, this is a complete misuse of the term “Creationism.” What Lengagne means by “Creationism” is simply “anti-evolutionism.” This is seen in his paragraph 6, when speaking of Darwin, he writes:

His works mark the end of the agreement between natural history and the Christian tradition, as well as the birth of anti-evolutionist movements (emphasis in original).

What is meant by “Creationism” has nothing to do with what “Creationism” actually means. If you ask the average person if he is a Creationist, he will answer the question by understanding “Creationism” to mean simply that at some point the universe was created by someone. This, however, is hardly the same thing as asking, “Are you anti-evolution?” since you can be a creationist who believes in evolution too (Behe once again serves as an example of this). The ambiguity of the term here is most unfortunate (it’s also present in the term evolution, but that can be delved into in a separate post).

With this as the “foundation” for what Creationism is, we read the following definition in paragraph 30:

The most intransigent of the supporters of creationism claim that the world was created by God in six days and maintain that the transformist or evolutionist theories that conflict with the Bible, according to which God created each plant or animal species individually, can only be lies. They say that science is wrong because, in the strictest possible sense, the Bible says something else – which reminds us, incidentally, of the trial of a man called Galileo.

First, you gotta love the poisoning of the well with the Galileo comment. But even that aside, it’s completely inaccurate to claim that the Bible teaches “God created each plant or animal species individually (emphasis added)” as the Bible does not speak of species. In fact, the term “species” is such a meaningless term even in biology that it’s worthless to bring it up here. (Any Darwinists who would disagree would be hard pressed to actually present the definition of “species.”) The Bible merely speaks of various “kinds” that have been created; it’s the Naturalist who anachronistically reads into that term the concept of “species” that causes the problem here.

Finally, let us look at how this document defines science and knowledge, and this is where the document damns itself beyond all hope of recovery. We hear that there are three pillars to science (paragraph 24):

As Guillaume Lecointre, a professor of zoology at the National Natural History Museum in Paris, points out, science is the totality of operations that produce objective knowledge. A statement on the world can only be described as objective if it has been verified by an independent observer. This verification depends on three factors: scepticism, rationality and logic and, finally, methodological materialism. These three pillars ensure the objectivity of a scientific result.

The problem with this is that they consulted a professor of zoology to answer a philosophy of science question. Here we have the first claim: “Science is the totality of operations that produce objective knowledge (emphasis added).” If that is true, it is impossible to objectively know this statement. Further, “A statement on the world can only be described as objective if it has been verified by an independent observer.” This falls instant prey to the brain-in-a-vat argument. After all, all knowledge that we have is subjective knowledge. We do not know what anyone else knows. We can hear what we think they say, but we have no objective way of knowing whether they really exist or whether we imagined them, let alone a way of knowing whether they are lying to us if they really do exist. Further, even if they do exist and aren’t lying there’s still no way we can claim they are “independent” observers. Each observer has his own presuppositional baggage that he brings to the plate. There is no such thing as a neutral, independent observer of anything.

Finally, we see that the three pillars are “scepticism” (which is obviously not applied to this definition of science), “rationality and logic” (which also refute this definition, because either it is a contradiction that science is the “totality of operations” that can produce objective knowledge since this statement is supposedly objectively true, or this statement is circularly reasoned) and “methodological materialism” (which likewise fails the logic test by engaging in circular reasoning: assuming materialism to prove there is only materialism; and is itself an immaterial concept that is being held as truth, hence a contradiction).

But this is all lost on the author, for we read in paragraph 46:

However, let us repeat: it is not possible to establish knowledge without scientific evidence and without verifying its objectivity and scientific character by the reproduction of experiments and/or observations.

One must simply ask: What scientific evidence do we have for this claim? How can we verify that this is the way to determine objectivity? What experiments can we reproduce to prove that reproducing experiments is what will give us knowledge?

It is blatantly obvious that no philosopher was interviewed during the course of the Council’s work. The Council, in essence, is claiming that knowledge can only be established by means which are impotent to establish knowledge. Thus, there is no scientific knowledge under these rules…yet the Council pretends that there are!

So we see that this document mis-defines Creationism and science both; it is based on presuppositions that are self-refuting; it doesn’t bother to actually address specific arguments against evolution (and it really doesn’t put forth any for evolution either); and it commits basic Philosophy 101 errors. On the whole, a very pathetic piece of propaganda.

By the way, after I posted last night, as I was getting ready to go to sleep, I thought of a possible objection to the math I used in my previous post regarding how fast the Grand Canyon is growing. Simply put, my figures only looked at one aspect: the depth of the canyon. However, the Grand Canyon is a three dimensional object (although is it really proper to call the absense of something–rock–an object?). Anyway, that meant today I redid my figures based on these statistics. There we are told that the Grand Canyon has a volume of 4.17 trillion cubic meters, which averages out to 695,000 cubic meters of erosion per year:

4.17 trillion cubic meters = 4,170,000,000,000 cubic meters

4,170,000,000,000 cubic meters / 6,000,000 years = 695,000 cubic meters/year

This incorporates both the river’s depth and the width of the canyon as a whole averaged out over the course of the 6 million years that it is claimed the Grand Canyon took to “create.” I’ll look at this number a bit more later.

But I do have to confess that I’m not sure how they arrived at the figure of 4.17 trillion cubic meters of volume for the Grand Canyon. After all, we are told that the canyon is:

433 km long (river length)
16 km average width (with 28.81 km max width)
1.6 km average depth

Now, running those figures for volume (i.e. length x width x depth) yeilds 4,330 cubic km (using the average number for the width)–which is 4,330,000 cubic m. That’s 4.33 million, not 4.17 trillion cubic meters. Even if we use the max width, we only get 7,800 cubic km, which is 7.8 million cubic meters.

My next thought was that maybe it had something to do with the river length that they were measuring. Since rivers meander, however, it seems that using the river length would actually make the volume larger than using a straight line measurement. (To visualize this, if you have a 1 foot long/wide square, you can wrap a 3 foot long jump rope inside it easily. The area of the square is one square foot, yet the rope is three feet long. Thus, if we incorporate the river miles into the cube we’re looking at, we can actually get a vastly inflated volume. Only if the river was perfectly straight would we get the correct length for the cube we’re looking at.

In any case, I could see how simplifying this to a cube would be nowhere near accurate as a cube isn’t a canyon; however, measuring the canyon in the simpler cubic form should give results too large rather than too small, as the canyon should fit inside the cube. So, again, I’m not sure where the National Park Service got their numbers for 4.17 trillion cubic meters of volume in the Grand Canyon. In fact, if we stipulate that the length and width are correct, in order to get 4.17 trillion cubic meters of volume, the canyon would need to be:

4.17 trillion cubic meters = 4,170,000,000,000 m = 4,170,000,000 km

X km x 433 km x 28.81 km = 4,170,000,000 km^3 =
X km = (4,170,000,000 km^3)/(433 km)(28.81 km) = 334,275 km

334,275 km is about 209,000 miles. Clearly, something is weird with these figures. Unfortunately, the National Park Service does not provide enough information about their method of measurement for me to be able to do anything else with this. About the only thing I can figure is that it might have something to do with the elevation differences between the head of the canyon and the end of the canyon. Still, that would have to be pretty impressive to account for the difference between 4.17 trillion cubic meters and 7.8 million cubic meters: a difference so minute that you’re still left trying to account for 4.17 trillion cubic meters when you take rounding into consideration:

4,170,000,000,000 – 7,800,000 = 4,169,992,200,000…rounds to 4.17 trillion.

I’ve mentioned before that I am not a YEC (Young Earth Creationist). My official stance is that I am ignorant and apathetic as to the age of the Earth. I don’t know how old it is, and I don’t think it matters. Reading Genesis 1 typologically (or analogically, if you prefer) as I do leaves the days undefined, so the Earth could be vastly old.

On the other hand, I have serious doubts about the validity of much of the science that goes into the dating of the age of the Earth. I think the evidence for the age of the Earth is vastly overstated and requires one to presuppose too many “facts” before beginning the scientific process. In other words, when it comes to dating the age of the Earth most of the science is simply assuming that certain processes would take a specific amount of time to accomplish, finding those processes, and then declaring that it took a specfic amount of time to accomplish those processes (a viciously circular argument).

Case in point. Gene Bridges (a co-writer at Triablogue) sent me an e-mail with a link to an article entitled ‘Three-day’ canyon to be opened to the public. In this article, we read:

Geologic time has a different meaning when it comes to Canyon Lake Gorge. You could say it dates to about the end of the Enron era.

A torrent of water from an overflowing lake sliced open the earth in 2002, exposing rock formations, fossils and even dinosaur footprints in just three days. Since then, the canyon has been accessible only to researchers to protect it from vandals, but today it will be opened for its first public tour.

“It exposed these rocks so quickly and it dug so deeply, there wasn’t a blade of grass or a layer of algae,” said Bill Ward, a retired geology professor from the University of New Orleans who started cataloging the gorge almost immediately after the flood.

The mile-and-a-half-long gorge, up to 80 feet deep, was dug out from what had been a nondescript valley covered in mesquite and oak trees.

Now first let me point out a couple of things. The article itself begins by making the comparison to geological time. This is interesting given the conclusion of the article (which I will quote below). However, anyone who’s lived near snow run-off would not find it at all surprising that huge canyons can be carved so quickly. Indeed, I remember my grandparents (who live in the mountains) and their driveway, which constantly becomes “canyonized” every time the snow melts, or the rain pours down, etc. If it weren’t for human maintenance, the driveway would be a gully easily within two or three years. So the fact that water can do this is not at all that shocking.

But even though the article references geological time, they still defend it. (Obviously, for how would it be good “science” if they questioned scientific orthodoxy?) They look at the obvious reference to the Grand Canyon and conclude:

It took water about 6 million years to carve the Grand Canyon, which is 6,000 feet at its deepest point and 15 miles at its widest.

The more modest Canyon Lake Gorge still displays a fault line and rock formations carved by water that seeped down and bubbled up for millions of years before the flooding.

So here we have the comparison to the Grand Canyon, along with the assurance that the reason the Canyon Lake Gorge came so quickly is because it was on a fault line and water was cutting for millions of years already. But the only reason that we make that assumption is because we first assume that the Grand Canyon did take 6 million years to get to 6,000 feet deep.

By the way, try the math on that Grand Canyon erosion rate. You get an anual erosion rate of 0.001 feet per year, which is 0.012 inches per year. Now, honestly, does anyone think the Colorado River (before it was dammed up) only eroded through the rock at a rate of 0.012 inches per year?

Anyway, let us return to the point. We have an 80 foot deep canyon created in 3 days by a flood. We’ve seen this happen in our time. Now, I for one do not need Flood Geology (as in Noah’s Flood) for my worldview, but seriously if a three-day flood can carve an 80 foot deep channel, why couldn’t a flood that lasted over a year and covered the entire Earth be unable to carve the Grand Canyon?

(BTW: in the interest of full disclosure, I don’t believe in a world-wide Noah’s Flood; I think the context of the passage is localized. So this actually wouldn’t be the cause of the Grand Canyon in my book. And this is why I still maintain an ignorant and apathetic view toward the age of the Earth. Still, this is something that scientists ought to be able to counter as there are probably many people who read my blog who are YEC and who do believe in a world-wide flood.)

Anyway, I might have more to say on this later. As I’m studying Darwinism, I’m seeing more and more just how time-bound Darwinists are. That is, if they do not have enough time for evolution to occur then the theory is falsified no matter what other evidence they have. However, my own position doesn’t care about how old the Earth is; to me it’s completely irrelevant and thus it could be 10 minutes old with all our memories of the past manufactured, or it could be 10 trillion years old–neither would change my argument, nor the horrendous grammatical structure of this sentence. So I find it kinda funny how important the age of the Earth is for YEC and Darwinists alike.

Oh well…now back to your regularly scheduled sports news.

If there is one thing that characterizes Dawson Bethrick’s intellectual engagements, it’s the ever-shifting goalposts. A fine example of this is in the recent exchanges that we’ve had.

First, Dawson posed a question that he claimed “would have ruinous implications for the presuppositionalist approach to Christian apologetics.” Everything that Dawson put forth in his argument was done in order to demonstrate this “ruinous” presuppositional position. Let me make this clear. Dawson’s reason for writing anything at all was, as he himself stated, because:

If it can be determined that an “omniscient” consciousness would not possess its knowledge in the form of concepts, this would have ruinous implications for the presuppositionalist approach to Christian apologetics which seeks to contrive aspects of man’s cognitive experience as evidence for an omniscient being whose thinking serves as the model for man’s mental abilities.

I responded to Dawson, pointing out that nothing of what he said was in fact ruinous to the presuppositional position. My response to Dawson showed that his argument did not apply to the presuppositionalist position in the least, was based on faulty presuppositions of his own, and did not accurately reflect Christian understanding of the concepts of omniscience, etc.

Dawson then claimed that I misunderstood his post and had responded to something he didn’t even write about. I then showed how Dawson’s response to my response was, in fact, the very thing he claimed I had done: that is, he responded to things that I didn’t write.

Now Dawson has posted another response. This one is basically ad hominem attacks against me. Hey, when it’s all you’ve got in your arsenal…

Anyway, if we cut through the abuse, we find that Dawson has merely shifted the goalposts and forgotten the original point of his first post, as he typically does. Dawson’s original point was that if God’s knowledge was not held in the form of concepts, then this would be ruinous to the presuppositionalist position. Now, however, he claims that all his post was meant to show is that God’s knowledge could not be held in the form of concepts. He’s not even pretending to try to demonstrate how this provides “ruinous implications” for presuppositionalists anymore. Instead, he’s hoping to distract everyone with a song and dance routine in the hopes that no one will realize that he’s no longer defending his original premise.

For instance, I had said:

Now Dawson’s argument is simply that God does not hold knowledge in the form of concepts. To which I respond: so what?

Dawson responds:

That was always my argument. It has not changed.

But that has NOT always been Dawson’s argument. Remember, Dawson’s argument was: “If it can be determined that an ‘omniscient’ consciousness would not possess its knowledge in the form of concepts, this would have ruinous implications for the presuppositionalist approach to Christian apologetics…”

Dawson then opines:

Now his response to my argument, after he’s realized what it is, is “so what?” Why was it any different before I had to rescue him from his repetitive mistakes?

Dawson, you’ve not “rescued” anyone from repetitive mistakes—you’ve only succeeded in making those mistakes.

Allow me to demonstrate the lunacy of your argument. It would be as if I said: “The sky is blue, therefore atheism is false.” You respond: “I agree the sky is blue. So what?” I then respond: “See! Dawson agrees with me that the sky is blue! That’s all my argument ever said. He’s such an idiot for arguing against me when he didn’t even understand what I was arguing in the first place!”

This is what’s known as the classic “Bait & Switch” (which, incidentally, has the same initials as what Dawson’s arguments are composed of…but we won’t go there… *wink*)

Naturally, I cannot end this without offering the perfect example of how Dawson operates. I originally pointed out:

This [Dawson’s argument] obviously does not cause “ruinous implications for the presuppositionalist approach to Christian apologetics” since God can still use concepts.

Dawson responds:

Then why did Pike get his panties in a bundle in the first place?

Yes, that’s right. Dawson makes a claim, X. I point out that X is false. His response to that is to say, “Then why are you refuting X?”

I cannot make this up!