First, let me say that I didn’t notice it the first time I read it, but now I see that you have juxtaposed contradictory concepts: “proof” and “a priori.” Anything that is a priori is, by definition, unproven. Obviously, you can’t prove anything a priori.

Now, if empirical proof is what you have to have to know something, then I agree with Hume. But I reject that “if”. I don’t believe you have to prove your a prioris in order to hold to them legitimately (then they really wouldn’t be a prioris anymore). In fact, I think such an epistemology will inevitably end in absolute skepticism and the inability to know anything, for no one comes to the table completely free of all a prioris. Logical positivism itself is an a priori that debunks all a prioris. It is inherently self-contradictory.

How, then, can we arbitrate between different a prioris? One of the ways we do that is by looking at epistemology in terms of an entire worldview. Any worldview that is ultimately incoherent (naturalism, for instance) is automatically discredited. Futhermore, any worldview that we cannot live with consistently (again, naturalism) can make no claim to being true.

The Christian worldview succeeds on both points, whereas all others fail. Naturalism in particular fails to offer me any reason to believe that what a naturalist tells me is true, nor does it give me any reason to believe that I, a mere product of blind natural processes, can know reality in any meaningful sense.

Keep in mind that I often pose arguments for argument’s sake, not because it necssarily entails something I agree with. I often see the point, and merit, to arguments others make although I think that they are flat wrong.

So, let me start out by saying that your first few paragraphs are doing little in the way of beating a “naturalist”, as you call it, argument. It’s simply thumbing your nose and saying that they’re wrong because, well they are. That’s great, and you can believe this (as do I), but that doesn’t make your argument any stronger or theirs any weaker.

And yes, you’re correct on empiricism leading to positivism (and logical positivism)…though I am not an expert either.

And lastly, as to the sentence that puzzles you, you’re missing the main point which will make it a little more clear. You’re assuming that SOMETHING must be known a priori, either about ourselves, about others, about God. Hume eventually argued that NOTHING is known, or can be proven to be known, a priori. We learn everything, including about ourselves, a posteriori…through sense experience. This was empricism’s logical destination and if you believe this to be true, the “naturalists” arguments are not to far fetched.

If a naturalist wants to go on pretending that he is a particular conglomeration of matter that happened to bang together in a deterministic, mechanistic, unknowing, unfeeling, amoral, unintelligent “natural” process, on par with a turtle, a slug, or even fizz from a Coke can, then he can be my guest. But I would simply hope that he wouldn’t mind me being underwhelmed when he then tries to explain the universe to me. I might as well ask the turtle what he thinks.

Obviously, I don’t take empricism to its final destination. Pure empiricism is bunk as an epistemology. I’m not an expert on the history of philosophy, but it looks like Hume is the father of logical positivism, and that has long been discredited as a circular, truncated way of knowing (or should I say, not knowing).

This sentence puzzles me:

“If nothing, including God, can be proven a priori, then knowledge CAN be arrived at without God.”

It looks to me like knowledge can’t be arrived at, period, on this view. No one can know anything without at least knowing something a priori. One must know something about oneself a priori before one can know anything else (for example, that one is a knowing subject). My contention throughout has been that we can’t logically arrive at this necessary a priori about our knowing capabilities on naturalistic assumptions.

1. Ontological arguments are facniating but do very little. A naturalist would reject this argument immediately because you are presupposing the existence of God in the first place. If there is no God, there is no argument.

2. If you take empiricism to its final destinatino, as Hume did, you would find the argument that nothing can be known or proven to be known a priori. If this is the case, then knowledge is a posteriori…and would work on naturalistic assumptions. (This would also kill your ontological arguement).

If nothing, including God, can be proven a priori, then knowledge CAN be arrived at without God.

Now you have me defending people that I do not agree with! Gracious!

1. Ontologically, we could not have knowledge without God, for we would not exist without God.

2. Epistemologically, we could not have knowledge without presupposing the elements of a theistic universe. Knowledge simply doesn’t work on naturalistic assumptions.

As we often do, I think that we are having two completely separate arguments with some common terminology.

When you say “Science itself is an act of Faith” I took the word “faith” here to mean some sort of religious faith. Defining the term can be a little tricky, because it is very fluid and can have subtle differences in definition that make all the difference in an argument.

If you define “faith” in your statement as some sort of religious term, then this of course I would reject. While it is undeniable that this sort of faith guided the development of Western civilization and that what we call “science” was developed out of Western civilization (once the Arabs passed it on to us, that is), it is not necessarily true that the development of science required this sort of “faith”.

I just got through reading “The Story of God” by Robert Winston. It’s a fairly interesting book, light on the intellectual parts and quite entertaining at times. I really enjoyed the read because it is coming from a very different perspective; a Jew living in the United Kingdom. Robert Winston is a medical doctor (OB/GYN) and a bit of a Hebrew scholar. Towards the end of his book, he touches on our exact discussion. I’ll try and paraphrase what he says there, as it expresses much of my argument in a meaningful way.

There is a crucial difference between ‘religious thinking’ and ‘scientific thinking’. Both begin as statements of faith: a religious person might say, ‘I believe that suffering is rewarded’; a scientist might say, ‘I believe that objects expand when they are heated.’ The difference is that a religious belief continues to be held as a means of making sense of the world, whatever happens. If my suffering is not rewarded, for example, I might conclude that I haven’t suffered enough, or that I am not trying hard enough to see what ‘reward’ I am being given, or that the ‘reward’ will occur in another life. In contrast, a scientific belief—better called a hypothesis—is one which a scientist continues to hold only in so far as his observations shore it up, and is rejected if and when his observations suggest something to the contrary.

Scientists like Newton based their findings on reason. Another way of expressing that might be to say they drew their conclusions from the evidence of their senses. But that does not mean that science only accepts common sense…in the rarefied world of quantum physics which investigates the properties of matter, researchers are continually confronted with findings that shake their concept of reality (insert faith here). Can you believe, for example, that it is possible for an object to exist in two places at once? That a particle can exist without having any mass itself but, at the same time, can give mass to other particles? That light can behave like a wave and also as a particle? I find these concepts hard to grapple with, but I am compelled to accept them because the math they are based on works. Science can involve an act of faith—but it is a faith that’s qualified, a faith that rest upon certain other things that I know, rather than just believe, to be true. (End quotes)

So if your definition is left very open as to the meaning of the word ‘faith’, then yes, you would be correct. However, I think that this is not the case. I think you would rather agree that someone who finds themselves “impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true…a conviction that doesn’t seem to owe anything to evidence or reason” as someone having faith. This would be labeled by Richard Dawkins as the first symptom of the virus known as religion. This faith has nothing to do with science at all.

-Luke A.

That response would be good if it were not loaded with the very presuppositions that I have proposed. You do not realize that in virtually every sentence where you try to justify science on the basis of autonomous human reason, you must import capital from a theistic worldview.

“It seems to me that what you are trying to do is put science into religious terms so it can be refuted on religions grounds.”

Mmmm, kind of. Yes, I interpret the world through the lens of my theology, which is precisely what my theology tells me to do. This is God’s world, and our orientation to God affects absolutely everything else we do and think. In that sense I do put science into religious terms, but not in order to “refute it” (what would that even mean to “refute science”?). I am keen on refuting naturalism, not science. Do not assume that the two things are identical.

“when it comes to science, reason has the final say, not religion. Just ask Galileo.”

First, religion is the only thing that gives reason any credibility. Second, Galileo did not oppose reason to religion. He saw his work as something that glorified God. He opposed his discoveries to the dogmas of the medieval Roman church. The church’s misunderstanding in Galileo’s day no more disproves my point than Barry Bonds’s steriod use invalidates the whole game of baseball.

You make a good point about the Greeks, but I would add that they were theists, and that’s really the point I was trying to establish anyway. None of them were bona fide atheistic naturalists. As for Hume and Kant, I disagree with both of them broadly speaking, but I bring them up because they raise important philosophical points about epistemology. (And there were some similarities between them; Kant said that Hume woke him up from his “dogmatic slumber.”) Postmodernism has taken Kant’s views in particular to their logical conclusion and has ended up with an epistemology that I believe actually undermines science. Card-carrying postmodernists will not inject much energy into the scientific enterprise because they have seen the vast wasteland that is the end of autonomous human reason. That naturalistic scientists don’t see this yet is only due to their own failure to trace out the philosophical implications of their own worldview.

When you say, “Hume believed that the inference of causality is essentially human,” you only beg the question. What does it mean to be human? One cannot answer this scientifically. One needs to go to religion to answer this most basic of questions. Without borrowing from religious capital here, you have no answer at all. The problem is that you don’t see, even in your use of language, how indebted you are to a theistic worldview. (note: that’s “a theistic” NOT “atheistic”).

You ask me to prove how the presuppositions entail a belief in God. I thought that’s what my whole post did. Suffice it to say that naturalism could not ground any of those presuppositions, and I think I have already explained why. Only some notion of a personal God who designed us to know the world he created could ground these ideas.

With regard to the minds of other people, my powers of observation, etc.–How can I be sure that the people I observe are not automata who behave in ways that make them appear as though they have minds? How can I know that they have centers of consciousness like I do? I can infer it from what I observe, but then the naturalist tells me that I am nothing more than the product of matter + time + chance. That doesn’t sound to me like something that can be trusted to observe the world accurately and draw correct inferences. I can go back to the “essentially human” notion, but then I am back on religious turf.

“I trust my reasoning until you prove me wrong!”

But even in saying that, you are presupposing the possibility of a fair and even-handed evaluation of the evidence. You are presupposing the power to judge whatever might be offered to your consideration. Where did you get this ability if you are nothing but matter + time + chance? The cows who live down the street from me don’t have that ability, and yet the naturalist tells me that I and the cows have the same origin, and the only difference is that time and chance have worked a little better for me than the cows.

“As to your quote about the train, a ‘reasonable’ person would never believe the rocks fell there, in that order, by chance.”

Exactly! Atheism is completely unreasonable, and that’s why science depends on belief in God.

“The odds are against (remember causality, uniformity of nature?). IF he DID think that they fell by chance, he would find it quite remarkable, and would call over his friends. This peer reviewer would then slap him on the back of the head, point and big bend on the horizon and say ‘You dunce, we ARE outside of London! Someone put this here!’ He would only believe it until proven wrong!”

I am playing the part of the peer reviewer here (although without the scientific expertise). I am telling naturalistic scientists that their mental equipment and powers of observation were intelligently designed, just like the rocks were. Those dunces need to wise up!

My point is not to say that naturalistic scientists are wrong about everything they say. Far from it. (The age of the earth is a unique issue; please don’t assume that I am calling for a stance of doubt toward everything that is held to be standard in the scientific community). My point is rather to make people recognize that, if the scientists were not standing in a context where a theistic worldview had prevailed for thousands of years, they would be selling car insurance right now (no, make that rock insurance; cars never would have been invented). The fact that naturalism has hijacked science in the last hundred years is a fluke. Naturalists do not recognize that, given their own worldview, science itself (the task of gaining real knowledge about the real world through observation and experimentation) is an absurdity. So naturalistic scientists draw many correct conclusions; they just do so by borrowing capital from my worldview and abandoning their own professed presuppositions.

I don’t fear science. I do, however, fear God. I wish more scientists did as well.