Jet's Flimsy Denials
The apologist named “JET” is still sulking after I
responded to his
objections to my blog Virginia
Tech. In particular, he resents the
cartoon universe premise of Christianity being exposed.
Jet writes:
Bethrick simply assumes, rather than argues for,
exactly what people like myself, Greg Bahnsen and John
Frame straightforwardly deny: That God’s sovereignty renders humans puppets on
a string.
Why would I need to argue this? It’s emphatically affirmed in statements
like “God controls whatsoever comes to pass” (Van Til, The Defense of the
Faith, p. 160) and “God controls all events and outcomes (even those that
come about by human choice and activity)” (Bahnsen, Van Til’s
Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 489n.44). Since “human choice and
activity” themselves could only qualify as “events and outcomes,” they would
fall in the category of things that “God controls” on this view. Otherwise
statements like “God controls whatsoever comes to pass” would be patently
false, and the Christian god would be ruling over something it does not
control. Christians want to claim total sovereignty for their god, but when
this becomes problematic, they run behind “No, no! That’s not what we mean!”
Of course, theists are going to try to weasel out of the implications of such
declarations, but this is to be expected given their worldview-wide habit of
evasion. The theist needs to come clean on what he believes: either he believes
that “God controls whatsoever comes to pass,” which could only mean human
beings are analogous to characters in a cartoon acting precisely as the
cartoonist intends (indeed, as cogs in a massive “plan” which was set in motion
long before we even came to be), or he doesn’t (in which case his god is simply
another entity among all the others of the universe, having no more
significance than a rock). These are not my problems.
Jet writes:
This is a typical objection to a high view of
God’s controlling of the world, and it’s been responded to again and again.
Sure. I’m quite familiar with all the “responses” that theists have
presented in response to my points. I’ve already shown why they fail (see here,
here,
here,
here
and here
for instance).
Jet writes:
Bethrick seems to have no desire to even
acknowledge, let alone attempt to refute, the scores of responses to such an
oversimplification and misrepresentation of the Bible’s stance on this issue.
“...scores of responses...,” none of which Jet reproduces for
consideration. Jet alludes to what we’re apparently supposed to fear: endless
volumes of proofs and refutations all confirming the reality of the god he
worships while he keeps them hidden in his back pocket. He really wants to
believe this stuff, so he wants to create a scare crow in our minds by claiming
it’s looming overhead. I’m reminded of
If, therefore, we observe the dogmatist coming
forward with ten proofs, we can be quite sure that he really has none. For had
he one that yielded... apodictic proof, what need would he have of the others?
(“The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence,” The Standard-Bearer,
p. 65)
So long as what specifically he has in mind (assuming he has something
specific in mind) remains out of sight, he can take comfort in the belief that
it’s not been “refuted.” But enough with all the qualifications, dichotomies,
reservations and nuances; either Jet’s god “controls whatsoever comes to pass,”
or it doesn’t. Choose a position and stick with it come hell or high water.
Perhaps Jet has been in the fishers’ hands so long he forgot how to swim, so
he’s trying to avoid the latter.
Jet writes:
Once again, to repeat something said in part 1 of
this response, if you’re going to address Presuppositionalism,
then address the presuppositionalist’s view of divine sovereignty, not a strawman.
If it is a strawman, why do presuppositionalists
like John Frame (whom Jet mentions) and Vern Poythress stress the importance of
analogies that are very close to the cartoon universe analogy that I have
proposed?
John Frame confirms the appropriateness of the cartoon universe analogy when
describing the relationship between his god and the universe as he likes to
imagine it:
Perhaps the best illustration... is this: In a
well-crafted novel, the author creates a world in which events take place in
meaningful causal relationships to one another. Each event has an intelligible
cause within the world of the novel. But of course each event also has a higher
cause, in the author's mind. Normally, such an author will try to maintain the
orderly causal structure of his created universe. He may, of course, also work
"without, above, and against" that causal order when he is pleased to
do so. (Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought, p. 82)
Frame explicitly likens the “created universe” to a novel written by an
author, referring to this as “perhaps the best illustration.” I’ll give Frame
one thing: he’s close. The author of a novel chooses every detail that
characterizes the universe he wants to create in his novel. He creates the
characters which populate it, and he chooses what parts they will play and what
actions they will perform. Nothing in the novel appears or happens unless the
author wants it and puts it there. This is especially true in the case of a
skilled author. The characters do not make their own choices, the events in
which they participate do not happen by themselves, and the outcomes are not a
result of their intentions. Everything throughout the novel, from the first
page to the last page, is precisely what the author intends. There is no
exception to this, for the characters have no will of their own. Frame is right
on, but behind the times. With the invention of cartoons, we now have an even
stronger analogy for illustrating the relationship between the Christian god
and the universe, as Christianity affirms it.
Then there's Poythress:
Dorothy Sayers acutely observes that the
experience of a human author writing a book contains profound analogies to the
Trinitarian character of God. An author’s act of creation in writing imitates
the action of God in creating the world. (Why
Scientists Must Believe in God: Divine Attributes of Scientific Law)
Like Frame, Poythress finds the analogy of story-writing quite illustrative
of the relationship between his god and the universe he thinks it created. But
a cartoon has the advantage of supplying details which the reader needs to
supply in his own imagination as he reads a novel. So a cartoon delivers what
the cartoonist has in mind on a perceptual level, where a novel still leaves
much detail to the reader’s own inventions. Also, a cartoon proceeds at its own
pace, not the reader’s. The reader of a novel can put the novel down at any time.
But once a cartoon starts, it goes until the end, barring technical
difficulties, loss of power or atheological review
(which will bring the fantasy to a jarring halt – those atheistic
spoilsports!).
Jet writes:
Man is not a mere puppet, he is a fallen creature
created in God’s image
Of course man is not a puppet. But this is not because “he is a fallen
creature created in God’s image” (which is a double absurdity), but because he
is man and there are no invisible magic beings which are controlling his
choices and actions.
Jet writes:
God does not work fresh evil in man’s heart, nor
were any of those who fastened Christ to the cross innocent victims whose arms
God twisted. No Christian believes this. To fairly represent those with whom he
disagrees, Bethrick should not concoct or imply positions that nobody holds.
So, Van Til does not hold that his god “controls whatsoever comes to pass”?
Bahnsen does not hold that his god “controls all events and outcomes”? If one
affirms these statements, he can only hold man responsible for anything by
secretly contradicting them. Just as the god of the universe chose that I would
be born in the western hemisphere with two arms, a nose, blond hair and ten
fingers and ten toes, so it is with anything else about man, on this view,
including his actions – actions which he could not choose any more than where
he was born. It’s “the accident of birth,” as Van Til would put it in his
pamphlet Why
I Believe in God.
Jet writes:
Second, if Bethrick is himself an atheist, the
picture of reality that he proposes we adopt is truly silly. We are to believe
that apart from the cartoonist, trees (that came about by undirected “happy”
accidents) magically became paper (once again with no outside direction) and
pencils also mysteriously formed out of primordial slop. Then this pencil began
-through small micro-mutational adjustmenttts-to pick itself up and draw a
wonderfully harmonious world and likewise wrote and designed characters
(without the help of a conscious mind directing it, now mind you) all with the
same moral intuitions, capacities for logical reasoning and verbal
communication.
Jet attributes to me a view which, bearing the description he chooses for it, is quite absurd indeed. Does Jet cite even one statement
by my hand to justify his attribution of such a view to me? No, he does not.
His worldview is so intertwined in the cartoon universe premise of theism that
he cannot disentangle himself from it even to catch a glimpse of what a
non-theistic view of the universe is like. Jet’s problem is that he does not
realize that there is an alternative to the metaphysical subjectivism which
Christianity inherently assumes. I have already written on this in the
following blogs:
Metaphysical
Subjectivism and Christianity’s Cartoon Universe, Pt. 1
Metaphysical
Subjectivism and Christianity’s Cartoon Universe, Pt. 2
Theism
and Subjective Metaphysics
Does my view propose that “trees... magically became paper”? No, men
produce paper from wood pulp through a causal process which he discovered and
understands by means of reason. Does my view propose that “pencils...
mysteriously formed out of primordial slop”? No, men produce pencils from
materials they find on the earth. Does my view propose that the world was drawn
by a pencil which picked itself up and started drawing spontaneously? No,
existence exists, and only existence exists. The alternative to my worldview’s
starting point is to start with non-existence as one’s fundamental primary (for
only then would it be necessary to “explain” the fact that existence exists;
see for instance Basic
Contra-Theism). Theism attempts to broker a compromise between its starting
point of consciousness conscious only of itself (a patent contradiction) and
beginning with non-existence as such (for apologetic purposes). Why not simply
start with existence, and move on from there?
Jet gets after me for critiquing a position which he claims no Christian
affirms, even though I can cite numerous sources from the Christian camp which
affirm precisely what I am critiquing. But then he critiques a position he
attributes to me but which I have nowhere affirmed. He does not even go to the
trouble – as I have in the case of what I have critiqued – of citing statements
to authenticate his attribution of said positions to me.
Jet also wrote:
So, life came from non-life, logic from the
irrational, morality from the amoral, and meaning from non-meaning.
In a single sentence, Jet displays his penchant for Tape-Loop
Apologetics. If you follow the implications of what Jet presents here just
a little further, it won’t belong until you find something along these lines:
Presupposer: "How can your chance-bound, relative-only
materialistic worldview account for immaterial entities?"
Non-Believer: "I'm not sure what you're asking. But please, tell
me, how does your Christian worldview account for the 'immaterial'?"
Presupposer: "By the
self-attesting sovereignty of the Triune God of Christian theism."
Non-Beleiver: "Is this god material or
immaterial?"
Presupposer: "God is wholly
immaterial."
Non-Believer: "So let me get this straight: you 'account for' that
which is 'immaterial' by appealing to that which you say is 'immaterial'? How
does that explain anything?"
Presupposer: [blank out]
Jet will want to know where life came from according to my view. The answer
is simple: life came from existence. Does my view hold that “logic [comes] from
the irrational”? No, and Jet nowhere presents any quotation from something that
I have written which affirms that as my position. Like life, logic, morality
and meaning all come from existence. In Jet’s view, they come from an invisible
magic being which he enshrines in his imagination.
____________________________________________
The
Cartoon Universe of Christianity