I haven’t posted in a while. Sorry. There is a very good reason for this. I am now settled in the lovely Chicago suburb of Wheaton, and have now begun graduate school. It’s great.
Anyway, I have this class where I need to develop my own method of biblical interpretation, which is a very tall order. My professor raises some interesting questions. I have so many ideas in my head at the moment that I have to get some of them out there just to make sense of them. Many of these are only half formed because my conclusions will change the foundations. But you must know these (erroneous?) ideas in order to know why I ended where I did, much like you need to know the modern logic system to know why the other systems are preferred. This is going to be way to much for one post; I’ll probably even write a book on the topic in the future. You all are lucky; you get a sneak peak of the distant future in biblical scholarship. By the way, much of the various components of my theory are debated in theological, philosophical, historical, and literary circles, and I won’t give you my full reasoning for embracing one point over the other (I need to save a few things for that book). So, you’ll just have to trust me that I have given these issues thought and my conclusions are reasoned. But feel free to debate me; my conclusions need to be tested by others and not just myself.
Epistemology: Every theory must begin somewhere, and for me my hermeneutic begins with faith, not faith in God but faith that reason paints an accurate portrayal of how things really are. This cannot be proven, but is essential for knowing anything at all. That statement is really an amalgamation of two distinct theories. 1. Deductive reasoning works: The argument “If A then B is true / A is true / so B must be true” is a kind of reasoning really reflects the way humans know things about the world. 2. Inductive reasoning is reliable: the way in which the world works will not be fundamentally different in the future.
Now if, by faith, I take reason to be accurate, then it is reasonable to include faith in my epistemology. I cannot reasonably say that faith is not a valid source of information if I use it to ground reason itself. Another issue that must be dealt with in the beginning is the realities of the external world: Do things exist apart from my mind? The great skeptic David Hume would say that there is no possible way of proving the existence of the external world but functionally we must live as if the external world was real. I will go one farther and say that my five senses give me accurate (enough) information about how the world really is.
Now this might seem abstract to you, but I promise I am getting to the point. Ontology: What kind of things actually exist. If my five senses are accurate (reason and faith suggest that they are), then I observe physical objects. I also observe that every physical thing has a cause. And so I use my reasoning. I take the observation that every effect is caused by something and apply it on a cosmic scale. Every cause is in reality also an effect and cause by something else. However, if we could trace every cause and effect back to the distant path there must be a beginning, an uncaused cause. Scientists call this the big bang. However, this is not the beginning as I know it for even the energy that caused the big bang and even the empty space that the big bang happened in must have been caused by something. I call this uncaused cause God. Now at this point the only thing I know about this entity is that it exists. But I have never observed a natural object come into being by its own power. So I must conclude that this entity is supernatural (or at the very least preternatural). This kind of god is very close to what Paul Tillich would call “the ground of being”, the very thing in which all things owe their very existence.
Through my senses I also observe that the world is ordered. In the microscopic and macroscopic, the universe is ordered. Another observation is that order only comes through sentience. Chance can provide an explanation of order, but order more often than not comes from an act of a sentient being. In other words, order is far more likely to be the result of a design than random causes. Since I know of no sentience with enough power to bring order in the vast scale of the universe (humans might be able to do so given enough time and technology) and since I have already admitted the existence of a preternatural being, I think it very likely that the entity that caused the world to be is similar to the the one that brought order. If indeed they are in reality one entity, which I think is a reasonable leap of faith, then we notice that the uncaused cause must have sentience. This god of mine is beginning to look a little like the Christian God, eh?
Now sorry for the blatantly philosophical issues here, but I am out of time for today. Soon I will continue my arguments at a later time. But in the meantime, please leave some response. I can go into further detail and we can have some good, constructive dialogue.
Justified Beliefs 
Faith is not of yourself, it is a gift from God. So how can you not start with Him.
It is hard to know where to start in these matters, but the faith of which I was talking is not the theological virtue that can only be born of God. Instead I was using faith as a term for the trust you have that is not based on your other information gathering processes. When you sit down you have faith that the chair will hold you. Eventually, my views on God (including how the other kind of faith works) will affect these foundational issues even becoming the new foundation, but right now I am not at that point in my argument. I started with these issues because they shape how you read literature and view communication, and if I started with a fully formed concept of God, there would be key information that was missing.
Hey Joe, First, I just wanted to say that I think it is awesome you have
a blog. I too have been studying a lot and have recently felt the desire
to write. Not just to solidify my own thinking, but – and more
importantly – to share it and to get other people to think about
specific topics too. My hope is to start dialogues with friends, family,
and anyone else interested in hearing what I have to say. I wish you the
best with your continued studies and writing!
Now, on to the meat of my reply…
> “Now if, by faith, I take reason to be accurate, then it is reasonable
to include faith in my epistemology. I cannot reasonably say that faith
is not a valid source of information if I use it to ground reason
itself.”
I think you are mixing up definitions here. Accepting things like logic
and reason as accurate is known as intuition, not faith. I would argue that the proper definition of faith is something you would not want to incorporate into your epistemology – it is the antithesis of rationality.
See intution definition 5: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intuition
See faith definition 2: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith
> “…Scientists call this the big bang. However, this is not the beginning as I know it for even the energy that caused the big bang and even the empty space that the big bang happened in must have been caused by something.”
Contemporary cosmology still has not converged on a single theory of how the big bang started, but it’s possible that it came into existence from nothing (what we would consider zero energy). See http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html for a quick essay on this idea. I also want to be nitpicky and let you know there was no “space” in which the big bang happened… much like time, we didn’t have space until the big bang!
> “I call this uncaused cause God.”
Why redefine terms? It is more reasonable to acknowledge that the phenomena is unexplained and only attempt to define it when there is something there to define.
> “Now at this point the only thing I know about this entity is that it exists. But I have never observed a natural object come into being by its own power. So I must conclude that this entity is supernatural (or at the very least preternatural).”
How can you assert this? If we have no knowledge of this phenomena (and again, I’m not sure if a modern cosmologist would think this), then we can’t even know for sure that it exists now. Maybe it existed but has ceased to exist after the big bang. Maybe it was transformed into the big bang. This is pure speculation and nothing we can reason about at this time. All we can say is that either something or nothing happened that triggered the big bang. Which is to say we really don’t have a clue. 🙂
> “Through my senses I also observe that the world is ordered. In the microscopic and macroscopic, the universe is ordered. Another observation is that order only comes through sentience. ”
This is where intuition fails and we appeal to reason and evidence. We know that there are natural processes (natural selection) that can and do build complexity. It is not just conscious beings that build complexity.
> “This god of mine is beginning to look a little like the Christian God, eh?”
I’m very much unconvinced. You’ve proposed two “mysteries”:
1) How the big bang happened – I would agree that this is a mystery because it is currently unexplained. I don’t think we can fault cosmology for that, it’s still an immature field of study.
2) Why we see complexity in the universe – not a mystery as this has been beautifully explained by natural selection
…and somehow shoehorned a religious deity as the proposed explanation. Not only is it an unreasonable explanation, but it is no explanation at all. It provides no further information or insight into the nature of the universe.
I’ve tried to keep my points concise (and yet it is still a giant wall of text), but please let me know if you wish for me to elaborate on any of it. Cheers!
Hey Andrew; it’s good to hear from you. Have you been studying formally, or just at your leisure? I hope you are doing well.
I really wasn’t trying to be apologetic in this entry (although if it becomes that then so much the better). I am in the process of writing more of these entries in order to shape my own interpretation of Scripture, and these issues (i.e. who God is and how knowledge is formed) are actually intrinsic in the process. So, if you were to see my later posts, hopefully you would see why I chose to define things certain ways.
That being said, your point about intuition vs faith doesn’t really stand. I have weighed the evidences (or lack thereof) for the validity of reason, and so I cannot see it being properly called intuition. But even so, if it is intuition, then it is only through faith that I can determine that intuition provides valid knowledge.
I must admit that I am in way over my head with the specifics of contemporary physics, but I’ll try to respond. I have despaired that science will ever be able to explain the origin of the first thing. Science needs something to observe, but at the beginning there was nothing. Science cannot observe and identify the rules of nothing. It may be able to tell us everything about the universe in the past (and possibly the future) up until that very moment of the genesis (or end) of the first(last) thing (I’m not just talking about particles), but until it is able to describe where that first thing came from, a purely scientific cosmology will remain incomplete. Also on a related note, I’m not sure I can wrap my head around the concept that expansion creates our concept of space. Doesn’t the theory necessitate that the universe has something to expand into?
But you’re half right about my conclusions about the uncaused cause being speculative. To clear things up: Something caused the universe to be, if this was a natural thing then it is part of the universe and needs to be explained. If it is not a natural thing (the very definition of preternatural) then science can never be able to explain it. It is possible that whatever caused the universe was either used up or ceased to have any contact with the universe, but I see the fact that the universe has order as evidence (not proof) that this cause interacted further with the universe. It is still speculative because no amount of observation will be able to link (or separate) these two processes, but my intuition/ faith tells me otherwise.
In certain ways, we are going to be talking past each other at this point. For you, it is enough that natural selection exists. For me, my theories need to account for why natural selection exists. The laws of the universe are part of the order that I see, so why do these laws exist? Is it random chance? That is a possibility that will never be able to be refuted with science or logic. But neither can they refute the possibility that it was an act of creation by a god. The deciding “evidence” between your choice and mine will always be where faith (or intuition if you prefer) leads us. Along these same lines, you say a deity does not provide insight to the nature of the universe. I would say, that it depends on what you qualify as nature. If you include metaphysical data, then a god will provide not only information but in some ways the more important information. So I guess my overarching response to you is that natural forces do not give any further insight to the metaphysical nature of the universe.
Thanks for replying! I am not doing any formal studies, just reading lots of books and watching the occasional lecture on http://www.kahnacademy.com (highly recommended!)
> “That being said, your point about intuition vs faith doesn’t really stand. I have weighed the evidences (or lack thereof) for the validity of reason, and so I cannot see it being properly called intuition. But even so, if it is intuition, then it is only through faith that I can determine that intuition provides valid knowledge.”
I can’t really reply since you are disagreeing with my definitions and you have not provided your own.
> “The laws of the universe are part of the order that I see, so why do these laws exist? Is it random chance? That is a possibility that will never be able to be refuted with science or logic. But neither can they refute the possibility that it was an act of creation by a god.”
I will only agree that at this point in time it is unfalsifiable. I think it is presumptous to assume it will always be that way.
> “The deciding “evidence” between your choice and mine will always be where faith (or intuition if you prefer) leads us.”
My answer is “I don’t know.” This is not a faith-based statement. It is formed on the evidence (lack of) for the beginning of existence. This doesn’t by any means indicate that I am satisfied with this answer, or that I am not curious for a better one. It is an informed admission of ignorance. The answer of god, is, as you said, pure speculation and therefore based on faith. I don’t dismiss speculation outright – for it is the only realm that can bring forth testable hypotheses.
> “Along these same lines, you say a deity does not provide insight to the nature of the universe. I would say, that it depends on what you qualify as nature. If you include metaphysical data, then a god will provide not only information but in some ways the more important information.”
I think I was a bit ambiguous with my statement. I only meant to say that speculation of a deity does not give us any new information as speculation is not evidence. I think we are in agreement here. If we turned up evidence for a deity it would indeed be important!
> “So I guess my overarching response to you is that natural forces do not give any further insight to the metaphysical nature of the universe.”
The forces themselves do not inform metaphysics, but our observations of them do – how could they not? For centuries, mankind has attributed metaphysical explanations to physical phenomena – consider gravity, germ theory, or evolution. These phenomena have since been successfully explained utilizing methodological naturalism in conjunction with the scientific method.
I hope our conversation is helping you refine your thoughts – it definitely is helping me with mine. Seeya!
Ugh sorry – I meant http://www.khanacademy.org – don’t go to the other one it’s just spam.