a. John 14:6: "I am the Truth." Christian concern for truth is grounded in the trustworthiness of God, the true One.

b. Isa 1:18: "Come let us reason together, says the Lord"

c. Luke 10:27: "Love the Lord your God with all your . . . mind."

d. John 8:28: "You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free."

e. 1 Peter 3:15: "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you for a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear."

f. xxxxx"demolish arguments"

g. Paul "reasoned" with listeners (Acts 19:8-10, 17:31)

h. 1 Corinthians 1: "Where are the scholars? . . . We preach foolishness" Not a license for intellectual irresponsibility, but statement that intellectual pride often prevents thinkers from accepting a religion whose God dies as a criminal.

"Christ does not want us to be real fools; only to look like fools to a world which only thinks it is wise" (Sproul 147).

a. Dishonors God (just as disregard for love dishonors the God of love)

b. Leads to chaos/complete ambiguity about essential issues of life

c. Leaves us (as individuals, as Church, and as a society) vulnerable to manipulation

"Evangelicals have been living on the periphery of responsibile intellectual existence. The average Christian does not reallize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked from all sides as irrational or outmoded, and millions of students, our future generation of leaders have absorbed this viewpoint. This is a war which we cannot afford to lose" (Bill Craig xiii).

d. Encourages an unhealthy "double-existence" which accepts irrationality in religious matters, but rejects irrationality in the rest of life.

e. Permits/encourges many Christians to lose their faith in college

f. Leaves culture (Christian and non-Christian) suseptible to naturalistic or pantheistic worldviews which undermine civilization and which often render mere gospel presentation fruitless.

Reply: First, even if true, this doesn�t defeat the reasons listed above. Second, it�s only partly true. People don�t convert to Christianity on intellectual grounds alone, but many who would like to believe never do precisely on intellectual grounds. A huge number of people (myself included) are able to see the desirability of the truths of Christianity, but cannot make themselves believe in light of apparently insurmountable intellectual problems.

a. Copernicus and Galileo

b. Newton

b. Darwin and Spencer

c. Freud

h. Michel Foucault

i. Rorty: Each of us has a "final vocabulary" we use to tell the story of our lives (sometime prospectively, sometimes retrospectively). But, having been exposed to others� final vocabularies, and finding no way within our own vocabularies to objectively adjudicate between them, we now declare the end of philosophy: "renunciation of the attempt to formulate criteria of choice between final vocabularies" (Rorty, "Ironists and Meaphysicians"). Ironists realize they cannot step outside their historically contingent language, that criteria are specific to a vocabulary in use. Metaphysicians simply have not questioned the platitude of a single permanent reality to be found behind the many temporary appearances, the platitude that humans by nature desire to know; they accept the platitudes of the local final vocabulary, i.e. that of the West.

a. Chief tenants: 1) Truth is not discovered, but made, by each individual; 2) Incredulity toward metanarratives; 3) There are no final means of adjudication between competing worldviews; 4) All belief is conditioned by its cultural, social, and biological context; 5) Life is an artistic challenge and a power struggle between competing language games

a. The Deistic Critique of Revealed Religion:

b. Kant�s Critique of Pure Reason

c. Schliermacher�s On Religion and The Christian Faith

d. Hegel�s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion

e. David Strauss� Life of Jesus Critically Examined

f. Soren Kierkegaard

g. First "Old" Quest for the Historical Jesus

h. Height of Liberalism

i. Karl Barth and Dialectial/Crisis Theology (aka Neo-Orthodoxy)

j. Rudolf Bultmann

k. Tillich: atheism is really theism because it possesses infinite concern. The unknowable "God behind God." Symbols mediate our relationship with God. God is beyond existence and non-existence.

l. Liberation Theology and Black Theology: Idenitify kingdom of God with present order of social justice: a resurgence of revolutionary socialist liberalism.

m. Influence on university: Before theology was "queen of sciences," for it unified all disciplines by their coherance in God. Now, we have "multiversity" of unrelated fields teaching contradictory doctrines.

n. Conversion of theology departments to "religion" and "religious studies." Theology studies the being and activity of God; Religious Studies examines the the human activity of religon as an anthrological or sociological field. Only the second field is a legitimate secular discipline.

o. Widespread lay fideism: "If the classical Christian view has been built upon theistic proofs, one would hardly guess it today. It is not merely that we are living in a predominantly fideistic Christian era; we have become so fideistic that we tend to assume that Christian obviously is and has always been so. We are so sure of this that we cannot hear history speaking differently�how could any Christian ever think otherwise?" (Sproul 35).

1. Heb 11:1: "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see"

2. 2Cor 5:7: "We live by faith, not by sight."

3. 2Cor 5:18: "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what in unseen."

4. 1Cor 13:12: "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror . . . Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

5. James 2:19: "even the demons believe [that there is one God]�and shudder"

6. "Childlike": Alacrity and simplicity, not naivet� and childish obscurantism

7. Summary: Faith is understood to be contrasted with sight, with what is certifiable by the senses. Faith is never contrasted with or defined against reason. Faith includes belief, but extends beyond it, in active trust.

1. Pascal: "The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know. . . . If we submit everything to reason, our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous. . . It is right then, that reason should submit when it judges that it ought to submit. . . There is nothing so consistent with reason as this denial of reason [to determine Truth]. . . Two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason . . . Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them. . . Reason�s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it" (Pens�es).

2. Kant: "I have limited reason to make room for faith"

3. James, Newman, Butler

Schleiemacher: faith is "the feeling of absolute dependence"

1. Luther: "Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God"

2. Kierkegaard: Christianity is intellectual offense

3. Tertullian: "What is there in common between Athens and Jerusalem? What between the Academy and the Church? . . . Credo quia absurdum" (Sproul 27).

1. Barth: Faith is the "impossible possibility." "Genuine faith is a void, an obeisance before that which we can never be, or do, or possess" (Harvey xvii).

2. Tillich: "Faith is certain of only one thing, namely, the �appearance of that reality which has created the faith�" (Harvey 146, 150).

1. Faith = notitia (doctrine) + assensus (assent) + fiducia (personal trust)

2. Aquinas: Synthesis of faith and reason

3. Augustine: faith is "reason with assent" (Carnell 69).

4. Carnell: "faith is a resting of the soul in the sufficiency of the evidence" (82).

Objection 1: Needs are merely subjective, are really desires/weaknesses

1. Identify all possible solutions (e.g. a personal God exists or does not exist)

2. Falsify and eliminate all those solutions which are unlivable (e.g. atheism cannot be consistently lived-out; therefore atheism is false)

3. Confirm solution which does work (e.g. theism can consistently be lived out)

4. Affirm solution which does work if it is the only uneliminated possibility (e.g. atheism is false; therefore theism must be true).

1. Proof for an unmoved mover based on motion: "Aquinas is thinking here of causes that all act simultaneously like the gears of a machine, not sucessively like falling dominoes. So if you take away the first cause, all you have left are the powerless instrumental causes. It does not matter if you have an infinity of such causes; they still could not cause anything. . . . In order to account for this cosmic motion, we must postulate an absolutely Unmoved Mover, the First Cause of all motion, and this is God (Craig 81).

2. Proof of the existence of a First Cause of existence based on causation in the world: "We observe that causes are ordered in series. Now nothing can be self-caused, because then it would have to bestow existence on itself, which is impossible. Everything that is caused is therefore caused by something else. . . . The existence of any object depends on a whole array of contemporary causes, of which each in turn depends on other causes, and so forth. But such a causal series cannot go on to infinity for the same reason I explained above. Therefore, there must be a First Cause of the existence of everything else, which is simply uncaused; and this everyone calls �God�" (Craig 81).

3. Proof for an Absolutely Necessary Being based on the existence of possible beings: "There must be a First Being, which is absolutely necessary in itself. In this Being, essence and existence are not distinct; in some mysterious way its nature is existence. Hence, according to Aquinas, God is Being itself subsisting (ipsum esse subsistens). God is pure Being and is the source of being to everything else, whose essences do not involve their existing" (Craig 82).

"Leibniz does not argue for the existence of an Uncaused Cause, but for the existence of a Sufficient Reason for the universe. . . . "The first question which should rightly be asked," wrote Liebniz, "will be, Why is there something rather than nothing?" That is, why does anything at all exist? There must be an answer to this question, because "nothing happens without a sufficient reason." Leibniz�s famous Principle of Sufficient Reason holds that there must be a reason or rational explanation for the existence of one state of affairs rather than another. Why does the universe exist? The reason cannot be found in any single thing [or group of things] in the universe, for these are contingent themselves and do not have to exist. . . . Therefore, the reason for the universe�s existence must be found outside the universe, in a being whose sufficient reason is self-contained; it is its own sufficient reason for existing and is the reason the universe exists as well. This Sufficient Reason of all things is God, whose own existence is to be explained only be reference to himself. That is to say, God is a metaphysically necessary being" (Craig 83).

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence

2. The universe began to exist

3) Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence

4) That cause must be personal because the universe must be the result of a choice to create.

1. I undeniably exist (e.g., I cannot deny my own existence because I must assume my existence in order to doubt it).

2. My existence is possible.

3. Whatever has the possibility not to exist is currently caused to exist by another. Nothing cannot produce something.

4. There cannot be an infinite regress of current causes of existence. Current or conserving causality of be-ing (not originating causality of becoming) refers to the fact that I am right now a contingent being: "What causes me to be when I need not be nor continue to be?" (244). It is not necessarily contadictory to subscribe to an infinite regress of causes of becoming, for no cause is simultaneously existing and not existing; however, it is absurd to subscribe to a chain of causes of be-ing in which each cause is simultaneously both actual and potential because each cause would be causing an existence and being caused to exist simultaneously.

5. Therefore, a first uncaused cause of my current existence exists.

6. This uncaused cause must be infinite, unchanging, all powerful, all-knowing, personal, and all-prefect.

7. This infinitely perfect being is appropriately called God.

8. Therefore, God exists (Geisler 238-249).

"I for a long time accepted the argument that there must be a First Cause, untill one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill�s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question �Who made me?� cannot be answered since it immediately suggests the further question �Who made God?�" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a vcause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument" (Why I am Not a Christian, 6-7).

"The uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct countries into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind, and has no influence on the nature of things. Did I show you the partituclar causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts" (Hume 101).

Hume: "By this method of reasoning, you renounce all claim to infinity in any of the attributes of the deity. For as the cause ought only to be proportioned to the effect, and the effect, so far as it falls under our cognizance, is not infinite; What pretensions have we, upon your suppositions, to ascribe that attribute to the divine being?" (76).

William Rowe: "[this argument] makes it reasonable to believe, that a self-existent being would have some of the features the theistic God has in an infinite degree, but fails to show or make it reasonable to believe that the self-existent being has these features in an infinite degree" (Sproul 122).

a. No basis for believing First Cause still exists.

Russell: "As for things not having a cause, the physicists assure us that individual quantum transitions in atoms have no cause" (Sproul 120).

Smith: Causality is only part of existnece; a cause for all existence is nonsense. Existence is metaphysically primary. To demand a cause for the universe is to ignore the conceptual framework of existence, within which cause and explanation have meaning (Smith 233f).

Geisler: "The criticism �if everything needs a cause, then there must be an infinte regress� is bult on a misconception oof existential causality and the principle of sufficient reason. The latter affirms that everything needs a cause. Athis it would seem, as the atheists observe, leads to a contradiction of God being his own cause. But not all theists use this approach. Aquinas, for example, held that only finite, changing, dependent beings need a cause. This does not lead to a contradictory self-caused Being but to a noncontradictory un-caused Being. For if only finite beings neeed a cause, then when one arrives at a nonfinite (i.e., infinite) being it does not need a cause. Hence, from Aquinas� principle of causality the series would legitimately stop at a first, Uncaused Cause of all finite beings" (Gesiler 224-225).

Frederick C. Copleston: "...if there were no necessary being, no being which must exist, and cannot not-exist, nothing would exist. . . . Something does exist; therefore, there must be something which accounts for this fact, a being which is outside the series of contingent beings" (Smith 249).

Copleston: "I don�t believe that the infinity of the series of events . . . if such an infinity could be proved, would be in the slightest degree relevant to the situation. . . . An infinite series of contingent beings will be, to my way of thinking, as unable to cause itself as one contingent being" (Sproul 119).

Charles Hodge: "An infinite number of effects cannot be self-existent. If a chain of three links cannot support itself, much less can a chain of a million links. Nothing multiplied by infinity is nothing still" (Sproul 270).

R.C. Sproul: "no finite event can be explained by anything less than an infinite cause. Why is that? Because anything beginning to be can never be explained by a finite cuase since that finite cause itself must have begun to be and needs a cause, and so on ad infinitum. Therefore, only something that never begins to be can be the explanation of anything that ever begins to be" (Sproul 272).

"But adding up an infinite number of dependent beings within a series does not provide an adequate ground for them. If each being is a caused being, as they are all admitted to be by the nature of the series, then adding up all these effects does not provide a cause for these effects. No amount of effects equals a cause. . . . [T]here could not be an infinitely long series of contingent beings because there could not even be a one-link chain between the cause of being and the being caused. The very cuase of contingent beings could not itself be contingent. No contingent being can cause another being to exist. What does not account for its own existence could not cause another being to exist" (Geisler 245-246).

3.

"By admitting that the whole transcends, or is more than the parts, and that the whole is both eternal and necessary, and that all the parts depend on it, they have admitted there is a transcendent, eternal, necessary cause on which everything in the universe depends. But this is precisely what the theist means by God! . . . However, if the �universe� is thought of merely as equal to the sum total of all the contingent, changing, and finite parts, then there must be a cause beyond it to ground its existence as the whole or sum total" (Geisler 225).

6.

Geisler: "The principle of existential causality�that every existing thing has a current cause�is justifiable. In fact it is self-evidently true when one understands what is meant by �cause� and �effect.� A �cause� is that which is producing an effect and an �effect� is that which is being produced by a cause. The real issue is not seeing the self-evident validity of the principle of causality, but it is with showing that the world is an �effect.� The method by which this is accomplished may be described as a metaphysical analysis or unpacking of the nature of a finite, limited, changing, being of which I am undeniably one" (Geisler 254).

Sproul: To hold to indeterminacy is "to wipe out induction by making a statement which is formally invalid, being unambiguously and analytically false" and to violate induction by making absolute, omniscient conclusions from finite data, conclusions which "would spell the end of science" (Sproul 113).

1. Alvin Plantinga: "Perhaps the main function of apologetics is to show that, from a philosophical point of view, Christians and other theists have nothing whatever for which to apologize" (Clark 69).

2. Argument from livability and the Cosmological Argument.

3. Building a cumulative case for theism and Christianity.

1. "Just look around." There is not a single human being that has not been overwhelmed by the beauty and order of the creation.

2. The Argument from Design functions very powerfully on a gut level. Given a mathematical system, we infer a Mathematician; given an edifice, we infer an Architect; given a symphony, we infer a Composer.

1. April 7^th, 1980 Time: "God? Wasn�t he chased out of heaven by Marx, banished to the unconscious by Freud and announced by Nietzsche to be deceased? Did not Darwin drive him out of the empirical world? Well, not entirely. In a quiet revolution in thought and arguments that hardly anyone could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers�but in the crisp, intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long since banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse. Now it is more respectable among philosophers than it has been for a generation to talk about the possibility of God�s existence" (in Clark 7).

2. Vera Kistiakowsky, MIT physicist and former president of the Association of Women in Science: "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine" (qtd. in Ross 122).

Tony Rothman, theoretical physicist: "The medieval theologian who gazed at the night sky through the eyes of Aristotle and saw angels moving the spheres in harmony has become the modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature�When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it�s very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it" (qtd. in Ross 122).

"When we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. . . . The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. . . . Now the point of the analogy of the watch is this: just as we infer a watchmaker as the designer of the watch, so ought we to infer an intelligent designer of the universe (Paley, from Craig 86-87). Like Mayan pyramids.

Statement by Hume: "Contemplate the whole world and everypart of it: You will find it subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their inmost parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adaptation of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, prortioned to the grandeur of the work, which we has executed" (Hume 53).

Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 55-58.

1. The universe displays a staggering amount of intelligibility, both within the things we observe and in the ways these things relate to others outside themselves. That is to say: the way they exist and coexist display an intricately beautiful order and regularity that can fill even the most casual observer with wonder. it is the norm in nature for many different beings to work together to produce the same valuable end�for example, the organs in the body work for our life and health.

2. Either this intelligible order is the product of chance or of intelligent design.

3. Not chance.

4. (1,2,3) Therefore the universe is the product of intelligent design.

Jim Holt: "Yet even if Darwin�s theory is fundamentally sound . . . that doesn�t mean the design argument is defunct. For in recent decades, physicists have noticed an astonishing thing about the fundamental laws of nature. The 20 or so parameters they contain�numbers governing the strength of gravity, the ratio of the proton�s size to the neutron�s, and so on�appear to have been fine-tuned so that, against astronomically unfavorable odds, conscious organisms could emerge. Make gravity the slightest bit weaker and no galaxies suitable for life would have formed; make it the slightest bit stronger and the cosmos would have collapsed upon itself moments after the big bang" (Wall Street Journal, December 24, 1997).

Barrow and Tipler: Odds against assembly of human genome are between 4^(-180x110,000) and 4^(-360x110,000). (Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 565).

1. The universe could conceivably be described by aesthetically repugnant mathematical theories, or it could require a vast framework of disconnected equations, or it could be described by no consistent mathematics at all. There is an astounding elegance to the mathematical theories that describe the world, an elegance that suggests the presence of a Mathematician.

Davies in Superforce: "The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance, and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe."

The famous Russian physicist, Alexander Polyakov in Fortune: "We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."

Princeton Physicist John Wheeler: "The beauty in the laws of physics is the fantastic simplicity that they have�What is the ultimate mathematical machinery behind it all? That�s surely the most beautiful of all."

Einstein expressed his admiration for "the beauty of�the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly."

2. The mathematical elegance of the universe is so profound that it is often a more reliable guide to truth than experimental data.

Paul Dirac: "It is more important to have beauty in one�s equations than to have them fit experiment�because the discrepancy may be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory�it seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one�s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress."

Einstein: "All of these [scientific] endeavors are based on the belief that existence should have a completely harmonious structure. Today we have less ground that ever before for allowing ourselves to be forced away from this wonderful belief. Equations of such complexity as are the equations of the gravitational field can be found only through the discovery of a logically simple mathematical condition."

Paul Davies: "In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful. Time and again this artistic taste has proved a fruitful guiding principle and led directly to new discoveries, even when it at first sight appears to contradict the observational facts" (Davies 220).

3. If you walked into a room and saw mathematical equations written on the board, you would surely infer that an intelligent person had just been in the room. If you saw mathematical equations of incredible explanatory power in an elegant simplicity, you would infer the presence of a great mathematician. Similarly, given the incredible mathematical beauty of the universe, it is perfectly rational to infer the presence of a Mathematician.

1. Facing the firing squad: it�s far more reasonable to believe that there is in fact a designer than that all these facts obtain by chance.

2. Design on three level: (1) the conditions required for a functional universe, (2) the conditions required for the existence of life-sustaining planets, and (3) the conditions required for the existence of life.

1. The strong nuclear force, which holds together nuclei. If it were 2% weaker or 0.3% stronger, life would be impossible at any time, anywhere in the universe.

2. The ground state energies for helium, beryllium, carbon, and oxygen cannot differ with respect to each other more than 4% without producing a universe lacking sufficient oxygen or carbon for life. Sir Fred Hoyle, who has written against theism and particularly Christianity, nevertheless concedes that "a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology" (qtd. in Ross 113).

3. The mass of a neutron must be fine-tuned to within 0.1%.

4. "Unless the number of electrons is equivalent to the number of protons to an accuracy of one part in 10 to the 37^th or better, electromagnetic forces in the universe would have so overcome gravitational forces that galaxies, stars, and planets never would have formed" (Ross 115).

5. The expansion of the universe has to be accurate to one in 10 to the 55^th, or galaxies and stars would never form.

6. There are dozens of such parameters, all of which must attain incredible precision and balance with the other parameters. Roger Penrose, a non-Christian British physicist, calculated that the odds are one in 10 to the 10^th to the 30^th that the observed life-sustaining universe should appear, rather than a black-hole universe.

1. Solar luminosity and the greenhouse effect. Since the inception of life on earth, the sun�s luminosity has increased 35%. This increase�which would otherwise have exterminated terrestrial life�was precisely balanced out by a decrease in the efficiency of the greenhouse effect. "This decrease�arose through the careful introduction of just the right species of life in just the right quantities at just the right time" (Ross 135).

2. If the earth were 2% nearer or further from the sun, it would be unable to sustain life.

3. A life-sustaining planet must be in the right kind of galaxy, in the right area of the galaxy, orbiting the right kind of star, with the right kind of planetary companions, with a moon and plate tectonics, etc..

4. Hugh Ross calculates the likelihood of the existence of any life-sustaining planet to be one in 10 to the 53^rd. The maximum possible number of planets in the universe is 10 to the 22^nd.

5. Thus, not only is it extraordinarily unlikely that a functional universe should exist (rather than a black-hole universe, in particular), it is also extraordinarily unlikely, even in a functional universe, that any life-sustaining planets should exist.

6. Surely the existence of a designer is the justified inference from this information.

1. First form: an eternally oscillating universe, in which the laws of nature, the universal constants, etc., change with each re-explosion.

2. An actual infinity of universes in which every possible variation in the cosmological conditions is explored.

3. The example of a room full of Berthas; the natural inference is not that there are an infinity of rooms and I happened upon the room of Berthas, but that there is a reason why the room is full of Berthas.

4. Infamous atheist J.L. Mackie, "There is only one actual universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up are just right for life when they might easily have been wrong."

1. The existence of a Designer makes the presence of a life-sustaining universe far more reasonable.

2. It�s possible that the room just happens to be full of Berthas. With a gun to my head, I would adopt the more reasonable interpretation that there is some reason.

Reply: First, natural laws and cosmic constants are untouched by evolution. Second, evolution itself is a remarkable indication of intelligent design. Third, macroevolution need not be accepted as established fact. Fourth, naturalistic evolution is extremely unlikely. Atheist Julian Huxley calculated that the mathematical odds of evolution happening are only 1 in 1000^1000000 (i.e. one followed by 3 million zeros) (Geisler 90).

Russell: "When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience could have been able to do in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?" (Russell 10).

Hume: The teleological argument doesn�t prove a perfect being. There are problems, and even if it were faultless, this could have been learned through an infinite series of botched and bungled experiments (Hume 77).

Hume: "This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandonned it, ashambed of his lame performance: It is the work of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: It is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated diety; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force, which it received from him" (Hume 79).

Evil Reply: See week 9 lecture. Also, it is true that imperfection in the universe is inconsistent with the idea of a perfect God. In case of moral evil, free will can be seen as the perfection which requires the possibility of evil with it. Natural evil can be seen as purposive acts of God to punish evil, which is a prefection, since it would be imperfect for a moral Creator to express no displeasure at evil (Sproul 134).

Dysteleology Reply: Even if some objects in the universe appear to lack purpose, that does not necessary mean they really do (perhaps only that we haven�t found their purposes yet); When something appears purposeless, i.e. dysteleological, that does not refute the purposively of many other things which are purposive. Since purposive things do prove God, therefore we should conclude that objects which appear to lack a purpose do have an unknown (to us, for now at least) purpose, for if God is the purposer, then He cannot do any nonpurposive act (Sproul 132, Craig 87).

Since we have never seen a cause of the universe, the watchmaker analogy is false. We can only infer a watchmaker from a watch because we have seen a watch.

Reply: "This conclusion . . . would not be weakened if I had never actually seen a watch being made nor knew how to make one. For we recognize the remains of ancient art as the products of intelligent design without having ever seen such things made, and we know the products of modern manufacture are the result of intelligence even though we may have no inkling how they are produced" (Craig 87).

Moreland: "all events are unique in some sense, but no one would want to say that arguments by analogy do not apply to any objects whatsoever" (Moreland 63).

"[M]atter may contain the source or spring of order organically, within itself. . . . The world plainly resembles more an animal or a vegetable than it does a watch or a knitting loom. Its cause, therefore, it is more probable, resembles the cause of the former. The cause of the former is generation or vegetation. The cause therefore of the world, we may infer to be something similar or analogous to generation or vegetation" (Hume 56, 87).

"matter may contain the source or spring of order organically, within itself" (Hume 56).

Smith: Order does not presuppose conscious design.

Reply: "the notion of such a principle of order that is not intelligent seems to have little meaning" (Craig 87).

Moreland: "There is no radical generation [as in a machine] of order here [in a vegetable], but merely transmission of order from one entity to another. Living organisms cannot be used to explain order, for they themselves presuppose and exemplify such order" (66).

Possible disorder outside of our present experience disproves teleological argument. Somewhere in the universe where we haven�t looked yet, there may be complete disorder; or one day the world may become chaotic; so the teleological argument fails.

Reply: "Not only is there no reason to believe in a surrounding chaos, there is every reason not to" (Kreeft 57). "mere possibilities within the unknown world can never be used to refute the probabilities in the known world" (Geisler 90).

"Thus the universe goes on for many ages in a continued succession of chaos and disorder. But is it not posisble that it may settle at last, so as not to lose its motion and active force (for that we have supposed inherant in it) yet so as to preserve a uniformity of appearance, amidst the continual motion and fluccuation of its parts?" (Hume 94-95).

Reply: Chance does not explain a purposeful event; it is absurd to say that chance (i.e. a nonpurposive cause) caused a purposeful event (Sproul 133). Moreover, "the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) makes completely random development unlikely. For if the world is tending to disorder, unless there is behind it an ordering power it would more and more�if not completely�chaotic by now" (Geisler 91).

It is not absurd that somebody wins the lottery even though the probability of my winning the lottery is next to nil. Therefore, it is not absurd that we should be here, since somewhere in the universe the conditions for life would have to arise at least once.

Smith: The way things are is the way they have to be that way (natural necessity). We can expect to see means favorable to life because we are here.

Hawkings on the strong form of the Anthropic Principle: "in a universe that is large or infinite in space and/or time, the conditions necessary for the development of intelligent life will be met only in certain regions that are limited in space and time. The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty" (A Brief History of Time).

Reply: J.L. Mackie: "There is only one actual universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up are just right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is not made less surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one would have been here to be surprised. We can properly envisage and consider alternative possibilities which do not include our being there to experience them" (Moreland 55-56).

Moreland: "The belief that someone or other will win is not the same as the belief that Jones will win. The belief that the parts of the eye or the constituents of DNA will be arranged in some random way or another is quite reasonable. But this is not the same belief as the one about some particular arrangement (e.g. the one which produces the eye or life) and its likelihood. . . . In order for the calculation [of to apply, one must say in advance exactly what set of hands we are considering. We are not allowed to deal the cards and then pretend that the result was just what we were looking for" (Moreland 73).

It is meaningless to speak of the probability of life arising in this actual universe, for there may be numerous unknown universes, perhaps parallel to our own, in which conditions are different and life is more likely.

Hawkings on the strong form of the Anthropic Principle: "there are either many different universes or many different regions of a single universe, each with its own initial configuration and, perhaps, with its own set of laws of science. In most of these universes, the conditions would not be right for the development of complicated organisms; only in the few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop: �Why is the universe the way we see it?� The answer is then simple: if it had been different, we would not have been there!" (A Brief History of Time).

Reply: "mere possibilities within the unknown world can never be used to refute the probabilities in the known world" (Geisler 90). This theory has no empirical support whatsoever, and appears to be nothing more than a last-ditch resort to escape the conclusion of theism.

Once you conclude God designed the world, you must still ask, "Who designed God?" (Smith).

Reply: The infinite regress of unconscious causes: a) is defeated by the impossibility of an actually infinite number of things, b) is defeated by cosmological evidence of the finitude of the universe, c) does not account for sustaining/current causes of order, and d) never accounts for the design.

Russell: "where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find that they are much less subject to law than people thought, and that the laws at which you arrive are just statistical averages of just the sort that would emerge by chance" (8).

Russell: "if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the time of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending�something dead, cold, and lifeless" (10). The implication is that since life will end, the universe was poorly designed, if at all.

The order we experience is an order constructed by our minds, but which does not objectively exist.

Reply: If order is a product of mind, then all experience is a product of our minds. But even then, the fact that all minds have very simialar experiences of order itself requires a purposive explanation. To reply that the objective world gives rise to these similar mental experiences is to contradict the initial premise, which was that order is not in the world objectively.

Proves only a finite purposer, limted in power (Hume, Kant, Rowe, Smith). See last week.

Reply: Ultimately, an infinte cause of purpose is necessary to account for finite purposive effects. Thus, the teleogolical argument relies on the cosmological argument. It is not identical, for cosmological deals with undifferentiated effects, while teleological deals with purposivity in the effects which cannot be accounted for by mere causality alone (Sproul 130).

"A great number of men join in building a house or a ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth: Why may not several deities combine in contiving and framing a world?" (Hume 77).

Designer may no longer be living

Smith: The way things are is the way they have to be that way (natural necessity). We can expect to see means favorable to life because we are here.

Reply: J.L. Mackie: "There is only one actual universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it is therefore surprising that the elements of theis unique set-up are just right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is not made less surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one would have been here to be surprised. We can properly envisage and consider alternative possibilities which do not include our being there to experience them" (Moreland 55-56).

1. Science is NOT naturalism/materialism/scientism; naturalism is NOT science: The assertion that the material world is all there is IS NOT empirically justifiable.

2. Science can tell how things work, but never why they do (mechanism, not purpose). Science is metaphysically neutral; it tells nothing about meaning and purpose (or lack thereof). "[T]he explanation of the facts of the natural world must lie outside it" (Joad 79).

3. Science can tell what is and was, but never what ought to be (is-ought distinction); Science cannot provide any ethics.

4. Science depends on non-science (i.e. philosophical metaphysics) for its very existence. Science is in no sense superior, logically prior, or independent of the philosophical assumptions upon which it rests.

5. Science cannot provide any aesthetic.

6. Evolutionary theory does not suggest a metaphysical doctrine of progress

7. Wittgenstein: "We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched."

1. Historically, science developed in Europe and spread to other areas only when they were exposed to European influence.

2. Until 20th C, virtually all major scientists were committed Christian theists (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell)

3. Oppenheimer: Christianity was needed to give birth to modern science ("On Science and Culture," Encounter, October 1962).

4. Whitehead: Modern science could only have developed in a Christian millieu (Schaeffer 307).

5. Not a coincidence: Christian theism provided necessary philosophical assumptions for science to begin (see also Mollengen, Christianity and Modern Man).

6. Future of science in postmodern age is dubious

1. Hodge: "We only interpret the Word of God by the Word of God when we interpret the Bible by science."

2. Galileo: "The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."

3. Most problems can be solved by natural, non-literal interpretation, e.g. "The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises" (Ecclesiastes 1:5) need not be taken as a statement of scientific geocentrism.

4. Major problems reduce to disagreement over possibility of miracles, which we will discuss in several weeks.

5. Size of the universe said to prove that humanity is insignificant. This is a very common objection among materialists (e.g. H.G. Wells, Richard Dawkins)

1. Important to address, since some of the most striking evidence for design can be found in the existence of life.

1. A wealth of transitional forms were required by Darwin himself. In Origin he wrote, "Geological research�has done scarcely anything in breaking the distinction between species, by connecting them together by numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not having been affected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the many objections which may be urged against my views." He again confesses that "the distinctness of specific forms and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links is a very obvious difficulty."

2. Transitional forms are completely lacking from the fossil record.

Michael Denton: "We now know, as a result of discoveries made over the past thirty years, that not only is there a distinct break between the animate and the inanimate worlds, but that it is one of the most dramatic in all nature, absolutely unbridged by any series of transitional forms, and like so many other major gaps of nature, the transitional forms are not only empirically absent but are also conceptually impossible" (347).

Stanley: "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid" (qtd in Denton 182).

Gould and Eldredge write, "Phyletic gradualism was never �seen� in the rocks�.It expressed the cultural and political biasees of 19^th Century liberalism."

Denton: "In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity [phyletic gradualism] has always necessitated a retreat from pure empiricism, and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists, not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have struck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach�.It was Darwin the evolutionist who was retreating from the facts" (353-354).

At a 1980 conference of evolutionists in Chicago, Newsweek summarized the results, "Evidence from fossils now point overwhelmingly away from the classical Darwinism which most Americans learned in high school."

Denton: "Considering that the total number of known fossil species is nearly one hundred thousand, the fact that the only relatively convincing morophological sequences are a handful of cases like the horse, which do not involve a great deal of change, and which in many cases like the elephant may not represent phylogenetic sequences at all, serves to emphasize the remarkable lack of any direct evidence of major evolutionary transformations in the fossil record" (185).

3. Transitional forms, moreover, are impossible to reconstruct hypothetically.

5. The downfall of phyletic gradualism.

In 1980 the world�s leading evolutionists met in Chicago for a conference, and Roger Lewin summarized the proceedings: "The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macro-evolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No." (Parker 106-107)

Harvard evolutionist Steven Jay Gould: Orthodox neo-Darwinian phyletic gradualism, "as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy" (Parker 106).

6. The subsequent rise of punctuated equilibrium/saltation/hopeful monsters and directed panspermia.

1. Examples: rat traps, woodpeckers, and bombardier beetles.

2. The ultimate example, the living cell.

3. Michael Behe and Darwin�s Black Box.

1. Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, through mathematical analyses independently reached the conclusions that the chance evolution of life is about like believing that "a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boein 747 from the materials there." Hoyle decided "There must be a God."

2. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, Thaxton, Bradley, and Olson, and Robert Shapiro have all calculated that the chance formation of life from nonlife is about 1 in 10 to the 40,000^th. As H. and W. write, this is "an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup" (Denton 323).

3. However, evolution requires not only this unlikelihood, but an unending sequence of exceedingly unlikely mutations to produce any kind of developed life. Thomas Huxley, himself an evolutionist and anti-Christian crusader, calculated that the odds against the evolution of a horse are 1 in 10 to the 3,000,000^th.

1. "The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any known system; it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet, a number according to G.G. Simpson of approximately one thousand million, could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written" and "The process [of cells synthesizing organic compounds] is so efficient that some compounds can be assembed in less than a second, while in many cases the same synthetic operations carried out by chemists, even in a well-equipped lab, would take several hours or days or even weeks" and "The protein synthetic apparatus cannot only replicate itself but, in addition�it can construct any other biochemical machine, however great its complexity�" (Denton 334, 338).

2. "To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometre in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell.

"We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines�.We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines, particularly when we realized that, despite all or accumulated knowedge of physics and chemistry, the task of designing one such molecular machine�would be completely beyond our capacity at present�Yet the life of the cell depends on the integrated activities of thousands, certainly tens, and probably hundreds of thousands of different protein molecules.

"We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control�.

"What we would be witnessing would be an object resembling an immense automated factory, a factory larger than a city and carrying out as many unique functions as all the manufacting activities of man on earth. However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equalled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours" (Denton 328-9)

3. "In terms of complexity, an individual cell is nothing when compared with a system like the mammalian brain. The human brain consists of about ten thousand million nerce cells. Each nerve cell puts out somewhere in the region of between ten thousand and one hundred thousand connecting fibres by which it makes contact with other nerve cells in the brain. Altogether the total number of connections in the human brain approaches 10 to the 15^th or a thousand million million�.Imagine an area about half the size of the USA (one million square miles) covered in a forest of trees contained ten thousand trees per square mile. If each tree contained on hundred-thousand leaves, the total number of leaves in the forest would be 10 to the 15^th, equivalent to the number of connections in the human brain!

"Despite the enormity of the number of connections, the ramifying forest of fibres is not a chaotic random tangle but a highly organized networld in which a high proportion of the fibres are unique adaptive communication channels following their own specially ordained pathway through the brain. Even if only one hundredth of the connections in the brain were specifically organized, this would still represent a system containing a much greater number of specific connections than in the entire communications network on earth" (Denton 330-1).

4. Indeed we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139).

1. The incredible complexity of the observed universe is governed by a small set of simple and elegant laws that could be easily written on one side of one sheet of paper. The mathematical beauty is stunning evidence for the existence of a great Mathematician who engineered such laws.

2. The fact that a universe of such breathtaking fine-tuning should exist is inexplicable in atheist terms, but is probable on theistic grounds.

3. The likelihood that a life-sustaining planet would exist anywhere in the universe is vanishingly small. Again, this is readily explicable on theistic terms but almost inconceivable to the atheist mind.

4. Finally, the existence of life provides the most incredible instances of design in the universe. Not only has an exceedingly unlikely one-time event occurred (as in the creation of a life-sustaining universe or planet) but a whole chain of even-more unlikely events has occurred in order to bring about, and in order to sustain, life.

5. By far the most reasonable inference from this overwhelming abundance of data is the existence of a superintelligent Creator. Theists and Christians have nothing whatever for which to apologize and, if anything, it is the atheist who must apologize for dodging the crystal clear inference of intelligent design, and for performing mental gymnastics, and accepting impossibly vast improbabilities, in order to justify his world view.

General Revelation: What God has made known immediately (without mediation) about himself to all persons everywhere at every time through the creation, and which can be known by reason and observation independent of sacred text. It is described in the Bible: "For since the beginning of the world, God�s invisible qualities�his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20); and "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech . . . There is no speech or language where they are not heard. their voice goes out into all the earth" (Psalm 19:1-4).

Special Revelation: What God has made known about himself through historical acts after creation which are disclosed immediately only by those directly involved at the time and known mediately to many others through the testimony (oral and/or written) of those directly involved and not known at all to those who do not hear the testimony (Examples of purported special revelation: God talks to Adam, Tanakh, Incarnation, New Testament, Quran, Book of Mormon.

1. Livability: Personal, Absolute, One.

2. Cosmological: Uncaused, Personal, Infinite, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Unchanging in space and time, Eternal, Nontemporal, Nonspacial, Singular, Simple and undivided.

3. Teleological: Volitional, Creative, Purposive, Intelligent, Concerned for life (especially human life).

1. Our Creator is personal and cares for human beings.

2. Humanity is undergoing great suffering and evil.

3. It would be absurd for the beneficent Creator not to intervene or offer assistance to humanity as it undergoes suffering and evil.

4. Therefore, we should expect a special revelation.

1. God should make the divine origin of that revelation sufficiently clear that careful investigators may distinguish it from false "revelations," and sufficiently unclear that those who do not care are not forced to believe (given that God�s ways are unchanging, that there are many purported revelations, and that general revelation was clear for concerned and unclear for unconcerned).

2. This revelation should present genuine insight into human nature and lay bare the secrets of our hearts (knowledge that only God could have).

3. This revelation should confirm and not contradict independently known general revelation (i.e. an infinite-personal God).

4. This revelation should be propositional, since general revelation is propositional and if God made us and we communicate propositionally, we would expect him to communicate with us propositionally.

5. This propositional revelation should be written or reduced to writing (i.e. not permanently in oral form) because writing is the best known way for propositions to be transmitted through time and space. (On this account, it is not surprising that nearly every�if not every�purported special revelation has a scripture).

6. This revelation should be reliably transcribed (i.e. God should preserve its textual accuracy).

7. This revelation should be continuous from the beginning of time to the present or else to the time of its completion (not surprising that nearly every major purported special revelation claims continuity with an ancient past, especially Judaism). He must have a constant purpose of disclosure which has been accomplished or which is still in process. Otherwise God would have changed from an initial concern with humanity to lack thereof.

8. This revelation should offer a diagnosis and prescription for humanity�s problems.

9. Miracles or prophecy would be natural ways for God to authenticate his revelation since only God is capable of knowing the future and acting miraculously (though if this test is used, there must be a test for rejecting magic, sorcery, and educated predictions).

10. This revelation should be free from contradictions.

11. This revelation should claim for itself divine origin.

Geisler: "belief in miracles does not destroy the integrity of scientific methodology, only its sovereignty. It says in effect that science does not have the sovereign claim to explain all events as natural, but only those that are regular, repeatable, and/or predictable" (Blomberg 75).

Examples: healing of terminally-ill (2nd class); walking on water, raising of dead body to everlasting life (1st class).

R. Bultmann: "man�s knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced to such an extent through science that it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world [in regard to miracles]."

1. An omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent theistic God exists.

2. Now an omnipotent intelligence can do anything that is possible.

3. Miracles are not impossibilities.

4. Therefore, miracles can occur.

David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).

Benedict de Spinoza. Tractacus theologico-politicus (1670).

1. Violation of Natural Law Objection. Miracles violate the natural law known by science; therefore miracles cannot happen (Deists, Hume, Spinoza).

2. Wise Man Rejects Improbabilities Objection. A wise man always rejects an improbable event (Hume).

3. Self-Canceling Nature of Miracles Objection. The multitude of miraculous claims by all religions cancels them all out: "In destroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles, on which that system was established" (Hume 81).

4. Miracle Claims Fail Criteria of Credibility Objection. No miracle claim has ever been offered by credible-enough witnesses to satisfy the criteria necessary to accept their testimony:

5. Only Barbarians see Miracles Objection. "Miracles" occur only among uneducated, barbarous people (Hume).

6. Miracles are Existential, not Historical Objection Miracles are signs of existential rather than historical import; they are part of Geschichte, not Historie (Bultmann, NeoOrthodox theology).

7. No Controls Objection. If we reject Hume�s criteria, what criteria are we left with, since clearly many purported miracles are fallacious?

8. Miracles are Unknown Laws Objection. A so-called miracle is just a work of nature not yet discovered (Spinoza). The scientific method, in assuming all event explainable, eliminates the miraculous, which is unexplainable (Guy Robinson).

1. The Deity of Christ: God made Himself present in our midst (incarnation) in order to communicate Truth to us. (Show the transparency, and show that we first need to know whether Christ claimed deity for himself).

2. The Resurrection: this miracle, in addition to achieving salvation and a decisive victory over death for humanity, was meant to validate Christ�s claims to ultimate authority and divine identity. But, again, in order even to begin to question whether the resurrection actually occurred, we are going to have to ask whether we can trust the account that we are given in the gospels.

3. The Historical Reliability of the Scriptures: drawing from archaeological, anthropological, and historical evidences, we will make a case that the actions and speeches represent the historical events accurately.

1. So I want to impress upon you the importance of the question of historical reliability. Without a confidence in the reliability of the gospels, we cannot confidently say that Christ claimed divinity for Himself, we cannot say that the fundamental miracle of the resurrection actually occurred�we can hardly say anything with confidence about who Jesus was, what he taught, or what he did.

1. What we have at present are accurately reproduced from the original gospels.

2. The gospel writers were able to record accurate history.

3. The gospel writers intended to write accurate history.

4. The gospel writers actually did record accurate history.

1. (Overhead Transparency) The synoptic problem challenged traditional conceptions of gospel authorship.

2. Strauss and Bultmann.

3. (Not on your notes) Modern redaction criticism. Working from the assumption that the �authors� of the gospels were using various written sources for their gospels, redaction criticism investigates why the �redactor�, or editor, of a gospel included, excluded, and altered things as he did. Burton Mack has even seen three layers in Q, which represent the evolution of Christian doctrine from understanding Christ as teacher, to understanding him as prophet, to understanding him as God. Thus, Jesus was just a good teacher and, as his followers faced persecution in the days of the early church, they increasingly glorified their teacher until they considered him equal with God.

3. The Jesus Seminar take this kind of criticism even further.

1. The reliability of the translation and transmission process.

2. (Skip this) The formation of the cannon.

1. The authors were close to the events.

2. Were the gospel authors likely to remember the events and sayings accurately? Part 1: a question of dating.

3. Were the gospel authors likely to remember the events and saying accurately?

1. It is fallacious to pose a dichotomy between historical and theologial pursuits. Simply because an author believes a historical event to have theological significance, it does not mean that that historical event is not going to be told accurately.

2. Internal evidence makes it clear that the authors of the gospels wished to preserve an accurate record of the events.

3. Again, the apostolic restriction to eyewitnesses bears evidence to the early church�s concern with preserving an accurate tradition. Blomberg quote from above: "The presence of dissenting eyewitnesses, the control exercised by the apostolic leadership as the church grew and proliferated throughout the book of Acts, and the lack of reference within the gospels to later church controversies�all support the relative care with which the oral tradition must have been preserved. Conversely, refusal to eliminate the �hard sayings� of Jesus�attests to a conservatism of the tradition which did not feel free to rewrite the story of Christ�s life apart from the constraints of historical fact" (Craig 210).

4. Early church Fathers were certainly concerned with factual accounts. Origen, for example, spent a great deal of time travelling to the places of the Bible to verify the stories. Could such a change in attitude arise in a mere 130 years?

5. Ancient historical conventions are all present in the gospels.

1. A note on historical method

2. Establishing the track record of the Gospels by external evidence

3. Jesus Seminar Methodology: Build positive case for each detail using Criteria of Authenticity: Multiple attestation, embarrassment, dissimilarity, Palestinian environment, coherence.

4. Summary: The Gospels� and Acts� presentation of the early Christian movement is very likely authentic historical-theological material. Alleged contradictions should be considered on a one-by-one basis with the burden of proof on the skeptic.

Blomberg: "There are seeming contradictions which lead many to assume that the gospels and Acts are not entirely trustworthy. The appropriate methodology, therefore, is to consider these one by one and see if plausible alternatives can be suggested in most instances. If they cannot, one�s initial assumption will have to be revised. If they can, that assumption should be allowed to stand" (Craig 222).

a. Goal: Trying to find out what really happened in the past [Access Christ-event]

b. Live issue: Need to decide if defendant is guilty [Need to decide if Christianity is true: Knowledge of immortality, ethics, salvation, and communication from God is at stake.

c. Method: Call on witnesses [Gospel writers]

d. Test witnesses� ability to report accurate testimony (taking into account emotional factors, psychological factors) [Stability of Oral tradition; Sanity of writers; Proximity to Christ-event in terms of authorship and date of writing]

e. Test witnesses� testimony against external evidence, i.e. independently known facts and records [Jewish writings, Pauline writings, Greco-Roman writings, Archeology]

f. Insure that witnesses intended to be historically truthful [Gospel writers� professed concern for historicity; Other New Testament evidence that the early Christian community were historically-minded]

g. Test witnesses� testimony by internal evidence; See if they are changing their stories when pressed for detail [Check closely for contradictions within each gospel]

h. Compare the witnesses� testimonies [Check closely for contradictions between the gospels], and see if there are plausible ways to reconcile their testimonies [Attempt harmonizations without special pleading]. If not, decide which testimony is more likely accurate based on above criteria.

i. Decision: Weigh alternative explanations and accept the best one (hypothetico-deductive method)

1) The Gospels/Acts are historically reliable records

2) The Gospels present Jesus teaching that He was God incarnate

3) Therefore, He did claim to be God Incarnate

4) Jesus proved to be God Incarnate by a) fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, b) performing miracles, c) living a sinless life, and d) predicting and accomplishing his Resurrection from the dead.

4) Therefore, Jesus is God (from Geisler, Christian Apologetics 329, 353).

Harvey: "the apologist, in attempting to prove that a certain type of supernatural event occurred, asks us to suspend that loosely connected set of assumptions and beliefs that enable us to make any nuanced judgments at all, including those concerning the miracle claims that are before us. Were we to doubt those assumptions, then we would have to doubt a great deal more that we assume when appraise the claims presented to us. In asking us to suspend all those things we take for granted, the Christian apologist is really asking us to reject our modern worldview, as at least some Christian theologians have candidly conceded. Meanwhile that apologist for miracles assumes this same worldview in his or her everyday life" (Harvey xxiii).

Notice: a) The claim to be God Incarnate is extraordinary enough to make us skeptical about whether Jesus really made it�and requires more evidence; b) An appeal to Old Testament prophecy to prove Christ�s Messiahship begs the question by assuming his Messiahship; c) Miracles, and especially the Resurrection, are extraordinary�we concluded last week that belief in specific miracles is not impossible, but requires a special, rigorous test:

Hume: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless this testimony be of such a kind, that a falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish"(Enquiry 77).

a. Multiple attestation Criterion: affirms as historical those details which appear in more than one independent source or layer of the gospel tradition.

b. Embarrassment Criterion: affirms as historical those details which would be embarrassing to the author or his community, and which we would therefore expect to be suppressed.

c. Dissimilarity Criterion: affirms as historical those details which are dissimilar to both the Jewish and early Christian communities. (Obviously, much that is Jewish of the Gospels is probably historical, and also much that relates to Christianity.)

d. Palestinian Environment Criterion: affirms as historical those details which require a Palestinian milieu for their origin (i.e. which cannot be explained well in terms of a sitz-em-leben in the early church).

e. Coherence Criterion: affirms as historical those details which are not immediately supported by one of the above criteria but are consistent with the meaning and import of other passages which are deemed historical by the above criteria.

Kreeft: "The doctrine works like a skeleton key, unlocking all the other doctrinal doors of Christianity. Christians believe each of their many doctrines not because they have reasoned their own way to them as conclusions from a theological inquiry or as results of some mystical experiences, but on the divine authority of the One who taught them, as recorded in the Bible and transmitted by the church" (152).

1. The gospels present Jesus as claiming divinity.

2. The gospels� portrayal of Jesus� claim is either accurate or not.

3. That the gospels� portrayal of Jesus� claim (MYTH) is inaccurate is incredible.

4. (2,3) Therefore, Jesus most probably claimed to be divine.

5. (4) Jesus either meant his claim of divinity to be understood literally or not (mystically).

6. That Jesus meant his claim mystically (GURU) is incredible.

7. (5,6) Therefore, Jesus meant his claim of divinity to be understood literally.

8. (7) Jesus either believed his literal divinity claim or not.

9. That Jesus disbelieved his literal divinity claim (LIAR) is incredible.

10. (8,9) Therefore, Jesus most probably believed his literal divinity claim.

11. (10) Jesus� sincere literal divinity claim was either true or not.

12. That Jesus� sincere literal divinity claim was false (LUNATIC) is incredible.

13. (11,12) Therefore, Jesus� sincere literal divinity claim was most probably true.

1) The crux of the Christian faith, the point on which it stands or falls (1 Corinthians 15:14-19).

2) The defeat of death

3) The firstfruits of the general resurrection to come (not immortality of soul)

4) A question of ultimate importance for every living person

a. Empty Tomb Evidence

b. Resurrection Appearances Evidence

c. Overnight Theological Changes Evidence

d. Shroud of Turin Evidence

1) Jesus either was crucified or not

2) Incredible that Jesus was not crucified (Multiple Attestation: All Gospels, all New Testament, Josephus, Tacitus)

3) (1,2) Therefore, Jesus was crucified.

4) (3) Crucified Jesus either entombed or not.

5) Incredible that crucified Jesus (living or dead) was not entombed (Jesus Seminar).

6) (4,5) Therefore, the crucified Jesus was entombed.

7) (6) Crucified, entombed Jesus either died on cross/in tomb or not.

8) Incredible that crucified, entombed Jesus did not die (SWOON).

9) (7,8) Therefore, crucified, entombed Jesus died.

10) (9) The disciples either cared or did not care whether the crucified, entombed dead Jesus remained in the tomb.

11) Incredible that disciples did not care whether or not Jesus� corpse remained in tomb (MYTH). Bultmann: "If the bones of the dead Jesus were discovered tomorrow in a tomb in Palestine, all the essentials of Christianity would remain unchanged." Tillich: "[it is] a disastrous distortion of the meaning of faith to identify it with the belief in the historical validity of the Biblical stories."

12) (10,11) Therefore, the disciples cared whether Jesus� body was in the tomb or not.

13) (12) The tomb was either empty or not.

14) Incredible that tomb was not empty.

15) (13,14) Therefore, the tomb was empty.

16) The caring women and disciples (12) either found the tomb empty (15) because they went to the wrong tomb or not.

17) Incredible that the tomb was found empty because they went to the wrong tomb. (Kirsopp Lake, 1907, Wrong tomb Theory: Women lost their way in the dark, met a gardener at an unoccupied tomb; he told them �You�re looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here.� Women fled and disciples had visions of resurrected Christ.

18) (16,17) Therefore, Jesus� tomb was empty.

19) (18) Jesus� tomb was empty either because Jesus� body was stolen or not.

20) Incredible that Jesus� body was stolen (Reimarus).

20) (18,19) Therefore, Jesus� body was not stolen.

21) (20) Since there can be no natural explanation for why the right tomb is empty (18), as reasonable people, we should conclude that a miracle occurred (i.e. a supernatural explanation is required by the law of existential causality).

1) Either the disciples saw something they described as Resurrection Appearances or not.

2) Incredible that disciples did not see some sort of appearances.

3) (1,2) Therefore, the disciples saw something they described as Resurrection Appearances.

4) (3) The Resurrection Appearances were either the appearance of Jesus having never died or not.

5) Incredible that Resurrection Appearances were the appearance of Jesus having never died (Swoon). Refer to Empty Tomb 8 for refutation of swoon theory.

6) (3,4) Therefore, the Resurrection Appearances cannot be explained by swoon.

7) (6) The Resurrection Appearances which cannot be explained by swoon were either subjective/internal phenomena or objective/external phenomena.

8) Incredible that the Resurrection Appearances were subjective Hallucinations (Strauss, Paulus, Ludemann).

9) (7,8) Therefore, the Resurrection Appearances were objective/external phenomena.

10) (9) The objective/external Resurrection Appearances were either physical or not.

11) Incredible that the objective/external Resurrection Appearances were Spiritual Visions on the "rim of history" (late Barth).

12) (10,11) Therefore, the objective external Resurrection Appearances were physical events.

13) (12) Since there is can be no natural explanation for the non-appearance or subjective nature of the Resurrection Appearances, as reasonable people, we must conclude that a miracle of the first order occurred (i.e. a supernatural explanation is required by the law of existential causality).

a. The need for offering sacrifices was regarded as obsolete.

b. Dietary and Sabbath-keeping prescriptions of the Torah were no longer considered normative; Sabbath day changed.

c. Clear-cut non-Trinitarian monotheism was abrogated by the identification of Jesus with God (as in the early Aramaic expression, Maranatha, which addresses Christ as Mar, another name applied to YHWH in the Dead Sea Scrolls).

d. The concept of messiah changed from that of a victorious political king liberating Jews from Roman occupation to that of a crucified leader who established a church by rising from the dead.

Blomberg: "In 1978 the shroud was subjected to a battery of scientific experiments, and none if the investigators has yet offered a convincing explanation for how the image of a man crucified in virtually every way like Jesus was formed on this linen cloth, with traces of pollen grains from first-century Palestine, unless it is the genuine imprint is a dead man, scourged, beaten, bloodied, pierced in the side and pricked around the head, who somehow disappeared from his wrappings without defacing the grotesque markings that had been left. Naturalistic hypotheses have not accounted for the absence of signs of decomposition and of the body being unwrapped, or for a probable light or heat scorch from a dead body in a state of rigor mortis" (107).

1. His father was part of the liberal, cultural Protestantism that meant little more than ethical anthropology.

2. While a student in theology at Heidelberg, Feuerbach heard Hegel�s lectures at Berlin, and turned from theology to philosophy.

3. After only marginal success as a philosophy teacher, he became a private tutor and lived with his wife off her share in a porcelain factory.

4. Like the other left-wing Hegelians, he became increasingly disillusioned with Hegel after his death in 1831, and eventually he broke with Hegelianism altogether.

1. Theology is anthropology: man projects out his species attributes�reason, will and affection�into an anthropological being we call God.

2. History of religion: the historical process of humans coming to self-consciousness through projecting their species-essence as God.

1. Theology consists of anthropology and physiology.

2. The feeling of dependency. Religious feelings come from the human feeling of dependency on the world, a dependency which expresses itself both as fear and as joy, love, and gratitude that follow release from fear-inspiring experiences. For man, "pleasure is an unearned reward, pain is an undeserved punishment; in happy moments he feels life is a gift he has not asked for; in unhappy moments a burden inflicted upon him against his will" (310).

3. Egoism, self-concern and self-preservation, is the root of the feeling of dependence and the ultimate root of religion. "[Egoism is] . . . the ultimate subjective ground of religion" (54). What makes something divine and worth worshipping is its utility, beneficence, and necessity for initiating and continuing human life�not anything significant in itself. Christians worship God for his helpful attributes; Egoism underlies the feeling of dependency because there is no outward power that does not presuppose an inner, psychological power; we are dependent on God/nature only because we first recognize that our own lives are divine and worth preserving.

4. The egoistic desire for immortality. "[M]an�s tomb is the sole birthplace of the gods" (33).

5. The imagination, under the pressure of death-anxiety, abstracts qualities of humans and nature into a Being that legitimatizes their hope for immortality. In theory, God comes first and immortality follows from God�s existence; in practice, though, the desire for immortality comes first and is the motive for imagining and believing in a God (267).

6. Anti-spiritual, sensuous convictions. Feuerbach believed people like Hegel were overly concerned with reason, completely ignoring the natural and practical aspects of life. We are living, breathing, sensuous, embodied beings that hunger, thirst, love, and experience life; our existence is not defined by purely abstract reasoning. In fact, the natural comes before the spiritual; we cannot think if we are not first fed (87). Feuerbach explains, "Do not wish to be a philosopher in contrast to being a Man . . . Think as a real, living being, as one exposed to the vivifying and refreshing surge of the sea of worldly experience; think in existence, in the world as a part of it, not in the vacuum of abstraction . . ." (Barth�s Introduction to the Essence of Christianity). The antithesis of this sensuousness is the abstract, natureless, anti-matter, anti-world outlook ("Negation") he sees everywhere in Christianity, especially in its setting up abstractions and class concepts before (as the cause and ground of) the particular, real, existing individuals from which those abstractions were derived.

7. Feuerbach�s humanist aim is that man should find in himself "the determining ground for his action, the goal of his thinking, and the cure for his ills" (276).

8. There are conflicts at the very heart of Christianity, such as that between faith and love.

1. Feuerbach�s criticisms of the cosmological and teleological arguments are weak and non-destructive. The existence of an infinite-personal God is far more rational than atheism given these arguments. Feuerbachian critique is the irresistible and just result of all mysticism and anthropocentric theology like Schleiermacher�s Liberalism, but does not touch proper theistic belief (Barth).

2. Feuerbach�s aphorism that humans created God in their own image can easily be inverted: God made humans in his image and therefore they�by virtue of their theomorphic nature�project out a God who is personal, like them. Underlying the "anthropomorphisms" of divinity is a theomorphic shaping of reality and humanity. By analogy, humans project from their minds scientific theories out onto the world and it seems that their theories objectively match reality; even so, humans may be projecting from their minds an objective knowledge of God made possible�as is scientific knowledge�by the divine creation of the human mind.

3. Feuerbach�s egoism fails to take into consideration the extreme difficulties and self-renunciation which a Christian brings upon him/herself by repentance and conversion.

4. Feuerbach�s Negation arguments, i.e. that Christianity is inherently anti-matter and anti-world, are doctrinally invalid. The anti-materialistic tendency in Christianity comes from Middle Eastern Gnosticism, Platonism, and especially Augustine�s Neoplatonism. Into this milieu, Christianity came as the decidedly materialistic influence which ultimately won Western civilization. Archbishop William Temple: "Christianity is the most materialistic of all great religions." Why? a) This world is real and significant and "good" by God�s creation and pronouncement in Genesis 1 (although not in itself ultimately significant); b) The Incarnation demonstrates that God himself was not ashamed to take on matter and a body�it is the supreme validation of flesh, this world, and the human body; c) Social justice in this world is one of the most predominant themes of Jesus� teaching; d) The early Church persistently battled the anti-matter heresies of Gnosticism and docetism.

Special case: Christianity is anti-sexuality

5. Feuerbach is inauthentic and shallow; he is a "non-knower of death, a mis-knower of evil" (Karl Barth). When Feuerbach says that the wishes and desires God fulfills for the Christian, especially the desires for immortality and moral perfection, are artificial and imaginary (277), it seems that instead his naive humanism prevents him from appreciating that these desires are fundamental, inescapable needs for humans. The secular existentialists, too, took death and evil more seriously than Feuerbach, but could find no satisfaction for these needs as atheists. Do you agree with Feuerbach or Barth/atheist existentialists?

6. Feuerbach believes he has adequate explanation for human existence in nature. Can nature alone account for human self-consciousness, love, creativity, art, morality, and reason?

7. If Christian claims are correct, turning to humankind for strength and guidance would be an expression of profound stupidity: drawing from a superficial resource when an inexhaustible resource is available.

8. The "contradictions" at the heart of Christianity are resolvable in every single case: Feuerbach presents a truncated and unbalanced view of the Christian virtues to construct their opposition.

1. Religion is so deeply ingrained because it is rooted in such a primordial experience: the helplessness of the infant. "The origin of the religious attitude can be traced back in clear outlines as far as the feeling of infantile helplessness" (Civilization and its Discontents 20, 21). "The whole [projection of the father-God] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude toward humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life" (Civ 22).

2. The need for protection from the volatility of the world: "Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures" (Civ 23).

3. The need, more specifically, for the protection of the father: "The derivation of religious needs from the infant�s helplessness and the longing for the father aroused by it seems to me incontrovertible, especially since the feeling is not simply prolonged from childhood days, but is permanently sustained by fear of the superior Fate. I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father�s protection" (Civ 20)

4. So religion is a delusional remoulding of reality, in response to the long-lasting, and intensely fearful, stage of infantile helplessness, into a reality which is presided over by a benevolent, and all-powerful father-figure. "The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind�to procure a certainty of happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality" (Civ 32).

1. The oceanic feeling is not the source of religion. "Thus the part played by the oceanic feeling, which might seek something like the restoration of limitless narcissism, is ousted from a place in the foreground" (Civ 20).

2. Still, a central part of religious experience is the �oceanic feeling� of unity with the divine. In meditation, prayer, worship, fellowship.

3. A longing for a return to the womb and the breast: to the time before the infant differentiated between a subject and an object.

1. The brothers band against the father, slay him for his power, and take his place with their mother.

2. The guilt concerning the slain father: the unnamed guilt that has plagued humankind through all history.

3. The internalization of the felt commands of the father.

4. The inhibited goal of genital satisfaction (because it makes one vulnerable to losing the craved sexual-object) becomes the basis of neighbor-love.

1. Again, not a rational refutation of the claims of Christianity.

2. This hermeneutic of suspicion can be turned against Freud.

3. Further, so say that we need God is not to say that God does not exist. To discredit a belief by pointing to its source is a form of what is known as the genetic fallacy.

4. If one were going to project a God onto reality, the Biblical God is probably one of the least attractive options (Sproul).

5. The desire for God�s existence can just as easily be seen as an argument for that existence, rather an against.

6. Further, it must be conceded that Freud�s radically hypothetical reconstructions strain credibility, to say the least.

7. How are these �primordial experiences� mediated to the present? Freud�s reliance on Lamarckian genetics. Freud writes that "in mental life nothing which has once been formed can perish" (Civ 16). This is questionable enough, but the issue of collective memories is even more problematic.

8. Freud creates his own story of origins (cosmogony) in the form of the bands of brothers and the eternal duel of Eros and Ananke.

9. Many scholars have argued that when Freud criticizes religion, he is speaking almost solely out of his experience of Roman Catholicism in the Austrio-Hungarian empire, which was, to say the least, one of the more guilt-obsessed forms of Catholicism and Christianity generally.

10. Nothing in Freud refutes the arguments for the existence of God, or the arguments for the reliability and authority of the Christian scriptures.

a) Social Justice concerns are right and good; financial oppression is real.

b) Nineteenth-century Christendom was particularly nominal and compromised.

a) Social Justice concerns are indefensible from a consistently atheistic worldview.

b) Marxist utopias are unrealistic and misguided, urging an abstract love for "humanity," which often manifests little love for real individual human beings.

c) Marxism requires a consequentialist ethic which inevitably leads to the destruction of individual integrity.

d) Marxist utopianism goes against empirical evidence of original sin. It seems that a model capable of achieving lasting change in an evil world must strive to reform the world without the expectation of utopia and on the basis of responsibility before God.

e) Marxism misdiagnoses humanity�s problem and offers an unsatisfactory solution.

f) Marxism sacrifices individual freedom and conscience for the collective good, an unacceptable compromise. In this world it seems that human nature (greed) will prevent the elimination of poverty.

1. The son of a Lutheran minister, who died when he was five, and was raised by his mother, grandmother, and older sister.

2. Offered a professorship at Basel before he finished his graduate degree.

3. His health was shattered when he served as a medical orderly during the Franco-Prussian war.

4. Cultivated a close relationship with the musician and cultural hero, Richard Wagner. Nietzsche even wrote an essay on the composer, before separating because of disagreements regarding his music, his anti-semitism, and Parsifal.

5. Resigned from the university in 1879 due to ill health�and, perhaps, the need for freedom to develop intellectually. In 1889 he went insane, and died in 1900.

6. "This eternal indictment of Christianity will I write on all walls�I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, stealthy, subterranean, small enough�I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind" (Antichrist 656). "I regard Christianity as the most fatal lie that has ever existed" (Will to Power 89).

1. Nietzschean ideals: not equality, but radical inequality; not democracy, but aristocracy.

"The Revolution made Napolean possible: that is its justification. We ought to desire the anarchical collapse of the whole of our civilization if such a reward were to be its result."

"Everything that pampers, that softens, and that brings the �people� or �woman� to the front, operates in favor of universal suffrage�that is to say, the dominion of �inferior� men."

2. Compassion is a weakness unsuitable for the man of power.

"The object is to attain that enormous energy of greatness which can model the man of the future by means of discipline and also by means of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which can yet avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created thereby, the like of which has never been seen before."

3. The inferior ought to be treated as such, and exist for the pleasure of the superior. The clearest case of this is with women.

"Man shall be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior. All else is folly."

"Thou goest to woman? Forget not thy whip."

4. Christianity, then, is wrong in that it asserts the equality of all human beings, and even advocates universal love. Human beings, Nietzsche claims, are simply not equal and we ought not to treat them as such; only the superior are worthy of our admiration, and the inferior masses matter nothing at all.

5. Advocating mercy implies a limitation on the freedom of the great to dominate in all their glory and might: an enslavement of the superior few by the mores of the inferior masses (more on this later).

1. Christianity learned from Platonism the hatred of this world.

2. Christianity learned from Judaism the hatred of the self.

3. Christianity learned from the ressentiment of the masses hatred of life.

4. To all of these Nietzsche says, "All the beauty and sublimity we have bestowed upon real and imaginary things I will reclaim as the property and product of man" (Will to Power 89). No longer will we posit meaning and joy in the �next� world and �next� self and �next� life, but we will affirm and revel in this world, this self, and this life.

1. The founder of Christianity is best understood as some kind of simpleton who taught inner truths in metaphorical language, but nothing concerning judgment, nothing concerning negation: "to negate is the very thing that is impossible for him" and "In the whole psychology of the evangel the concept of guilt and punishment is lacking" (Antichrist 606).

2. It was when the early Christian community was in need of an avenger that it put in the mouth of Jesus words of condemnation.

3. Jesus advanced no theories of life after death, of God�s nature�he only taught inner truths, in a simple, childlike, and even idiotic fashion.

(General)

(B. The Will to Power, the false values of Christianity).

(C. Christianity as negation).

(D. Jesus as village idiot).

(E. Christianity not true to its founder).

(F. God is dead).

G. After considering the content of Nietzschean claims, we find that he is himself subject to a plausible subversive critique:

Russell: "Nevertheless there is a great deal in him that must be dismissed as merely megalomaniac. Speaking of Spinoza he says: �How much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!� Exactly the same may be said of him, with the less reluctance since he has not hesitated to say it of Spinoza. It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is a warrior, not a professor; all the men he admires were military. His opinion of women, like every man�s, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear. �Forget not thy whip��but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks" (767).

Theistic Reply (Schaeffer): "As Jesus stood [at Lazarus� tomb], He not only wept, but he was angry. The exegesis of the passages John 11:33 and 38 is clear. Jesus, standing in front of the tomb of Lazurus, was angry at death and at the abnormality of the world�the destruction and distress caused by sin. . . . Christ hated the plague. He claimed to be God, and He could hate the plague without hating himself as God" (Schaeffer 117).

1. Atheism: Evil is the result of lack of education, poverty, and psychologically poor conditioning.

2. Pantheism: God is impersonal Oneness; evil is illusory (Hinduism, Christian Science)

3. Dualism/Panentheism: God is struggling against evil and we may cooperate with him.

4. The problem is unsolvable; We must trust God against the evidence (Neo-orthodoxy, Islam, Calvinism)

1. How can a random universe produce so much good? Why is there so much gratuitous pleasure (sex, eating, relationships) which ought to be like vestigal organs which no longer serve a biological purpose or function.

2. How can we call anything evil or identify culpability if there is no God?

Carnell: "Either God wants to prevent evil, and He cannot do it; or He can do it and does not want to; or He can do it and does not want to; or He neither wishes to nor can do it; or he wishes to and can do it. If he has the desire but not the power, He is impotent; if He can, but has not the desire, He has a malice we cannot attribute to him; if he has neither the power nor the desire, he is both impotent and evil, and consequently not God; if he has the desire and the power, whence then comes evil, or why does He not prevent it?" (Carnell 277).

Bayle: "God is: (a) impotent and cannot destroy evil, (b) malevolent and will not destroy evil, (c) both malevolent and impotent, or (d) there is no such theistic God at all" (Geisler 218).

Since we have already demonstrated the existence of an infinite-personal, omnipotence, omniscient God (cosmological argument), the Problem of Evil challenges the omnibenevolence of God (rather than omniscience of omnipotence). While the teleological argument demonstrates the overwhelming likelihood that a God exists who cares for human beings, it also suggests that that God might be a mixture of good and evil (as Hume argued). Up to this point, we have left the question of God�s moral nature unanswered (Objection B to the Teleological Argument).

1. God is omnipotent (and all-knowing)

2. God is omnibenevolent

3. Evil exists

4. A Good being always eliminates evil as much as it can (and knows about it)

5. There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do

6. (1,5) Therefore, God can eliminate all evil

7. (2,4) Therefore, God wants to eliminate all evil if he can

8. (6,7) Therefore, God does eliminate all evil

9. (8) Therefore, evil does not evil

10. (3,9) Therefore, evil exists and does not exist�>CONTRADICTION!!!

1. Argument is valid (i.e. if premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily)

2. Argument is not sound (i.e. argument is valid, but premises are false, so conclusion does not follow)

3. To resolve the contradiction, at least one of the premises 1-5 must be denied.

4. Christians maintain 1,2,3 and challenge 4 and 5

5. Challenge 4: That God has not eliminated evil as yet does not mean that God never will. As Christians, we believe God has acted (in Christ) decisively against evil, that God�s final and complete elimination of evil will occur in the future, and that God has good reasons for not eliminating evil immediately.

6. Challenge 5: God�s power does not extend to logical contradictions (if it does, then the argument as a theistic disproof is useless).

1. God can eliminate all evil where logically possible

2. God eliminates all evil as much as he can "properly" (i.e. without causing greater evil or eliminating greater good)

3. (1,2) Therefore, there is no evil which God cannot properly eliminate (i.e. the only evil which exists is evil that God cannot properly eliminate; all existing evil is proper). No evil exists unless God has a good reason to allow it; all evil which exists exists for a reason.

4. God could create a world which presently contains evil with good reason, even if we do not fully understand all the God-justifying reasons (and so theism is self-consistent).

1. Based on Libertarian Incompatibalism

2. Reformed theology (Calvinism): Compatibalism (An action can be both free and determined; God could have given us free will while guaranteeing moral goodness)

C.S. Lewis: "free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata�of creatures that worked like machines�would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman in this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free" (Lewis Mere 52).

Many atheists agree: "If some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer" (TH Huxley).

Reply: Yes, but there are other God-justifying reasons which may apply to specific instances of natural evil, and even if there are no immediately apparent God-justifying reasons for specific examples of natural evil, the understandable God-justifying reasons make it most reasonable to believe there is a reason (known to God, but unknown to humans).

Reply: [Notice that thi objection applies to Theism, but not to Deism]. We will always be in this situation where it seems that in a particular case, God could have intervened without significantly decreasing free will in the universe. Yet there must be a threshhold (Peter Van EnWagon).

1. Instances of gratuitous evil probably exist.

3. If God existed, there would be no gratuitous evil.

4. Therefore, God probably does not exist.

1. Premise 1b is unreasonable. The human epistemic situation renders judgments of probability in such cases fallacious: it would require omniscience for us to conclude that no hidden, unfamilair goods exist which are inextricably connected to an instance of evil. We ought to expect to understand God-justifiying reasons in many cases (cf. Free-Will Defense), because otherwise the disparity between our beliefs and experiences would be unreasonably great. However, it is unreasonable that humans should be able to understand all of God�s reasons.

2. Tapestry Analogy

3. Other God-justifying reasons which may apply in specific cases (including instances of natural evil)

1. Evil was not God�s original intention, but rather the result of human sin. God created evil only potentially, and humans actualized it by their choice.

2. Perpetrators of moral evil which seems to go unpunished will not escape judgment.

3. God has already defeated evil at its root in his crucifixion and resurrection

4. God promises work a greater good out of every evil, though he did not intend or create evil for that purpose (Romans 8:28).

a. Permanent separation from God

b. Punishment for sin and rejection of God

c. Self-imposed