The Bird & Babe Public House

We offer pithy pontifications by the pint-full, and the best brain-food this side of Blogsford. There's no cover charge, and it's all you can eat/drink (although we strongly encourage moderation). Like any other pub, we always appreciate a good tip.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Thoughts on Advent

The human race has always lived according to the seasons. As spring comes, we plant. Then summer arrives, and we tend the fields. In the fall we gather the harvest. And in the winter, we live off of the year’s bounty, and prepare for it to happen all over again.

Although this seems like a never-ending cycle, we should also note that we humans mark out certain days and seasons of feasting to remind us of events that happened at one singular point in history, and which forever changed the future. We call these days “holidays” (from the marriage of the two words “holy” and “day”). The word “holy” means “set apart,” and hence we can see that within the never-ending cycle of seasons, we set apart certain days as unique and worthy of being noted and remembered.

Not surprisingly, we Christians inherited this practice from our forefathers, the Hebrews. Ever since the Exodus out of Egypt, the Hebrews set apart special days in the spring to remember their salvation from exile and slavery. This holiday is known as the Passover. And every time we Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we remember that Christ took that Passover meal, and transformed it into the meal that it was always meant to be: a meal that looks back at Christ’s act of atonement for sins, and looks forward to His redemption of the whole universe.

Another great time of remembrance is upon us even now, and so we set apart a season of anticipation; of Advent. The word Advent means “coming,” and we are reminded each year at this time, that we await the Savior of the world, not only in remembrance of His first coming, but also that we are living in the time between His first and second Advent. As we prepare for the wonderful holiday we call Christmas, let us realize that in similar fashion to the Lord’s supper (and its attending holiday, Easter), we are looking back at that pivotal moment when God became flesh in the birth of Jesus, and we are looking forward to that glorious moment when He returns, and every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

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Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Is Belief in God Properly Basic?

After posting my previous post I have been inspired to consider matters in Reformed Epistemology (call it RE). Alvin Plantinga's book pictured above is a hallmark book as it applies to this topic. RE might roughly be defined as a theory of knowledge which is sympathetic to the Protestant tradition going back to John Calvin.

Traditionally, it has been asserted that belief in God is either irrational or intellectually irresponsible because there is insufficient evidence for it (call them AT for A-Theology); or belief in God is rational or intellectually acceptable because there is sufficient evidence for it (call them NT for Natural Theology). It is the case that both AT and NT accept belief in God if and only if there is sufficient evidence to warrant that belief.

Now, I think that both AT and NT are rooted in classical Foundationalism, Plantinga deals with NT and claims that it is rooted in classical Foundationalism (dating back to Plato and Aritstotle). Classical Foundationalism simply says that one's belief is based (founded) upon other beliefs so that I believe proposition A (It is raining outside) on the basis of proposition B (The sidewalk is wet) and proposition C (Dark clouds have formed in the sky) etc. Now, there are some beliefs which are not accepted on the basis of any other beliefs and these beliefs are called "basic". They are basic because they do not require a basis for their acceptance. For instance, I believe that 1+1=2 and I do not believe it on the basis of anything else.

The question then arises "What makes a belief basic?" When is a belief properly or rightly acceptable or warranted? That is, what makes a basic belief properly basic? NT, and many other classical foundationlists, have said that a belief is properly basic if and only if that belief is incorrigible ("I exist") or self-evident (A cannot be A and non-A at the same time and in the same sense). Now, NT says that belief in God is not incorrigible nor self-evident therefore one is justified in believing that God exists if and only if one has sufficient evidence for believing that God exists. That is, proposition D (God Exists) must be based upon some other propostion(s) which serve as a foundation for D. We might say then that NT is rooted in Evidentialism (the belief that one must have evidence to believe in God's existence).

This is where the RE comes in. RE holds that belief in God is properly basic. That is, it is rational or intellectually acceptable to believe that God exists without accepting it on the basis of any other belief or proposition. It is important to understand that RE does not reject NT as many of the Reformers did. Rather, RE holds that a theist is entirely within his intellectual rights in believing that God exists even if the theist does not know any good arguments or hold any good arguments for God's existence, or even if any such arguments exist (please understand this distinction).

If I went on to give Plantinga's arguments (or any other RE arguments...e.g. Alston or Wolterstorff) for epistemic warrant, it would probably take more pages for me to write than the 500+ pages that Plantinga wrote in W.C.B. I will hope that my readers have read it, or at least heard about, or will read it and can talk intelligently about it. I am interested to hear your thoughts on this.

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