Alvin Plantinga, Modal Actualism, and the Modal Ontological Argument

Socrates is a contingent being; his essence, however, is not. Properties, like propositions and possible worlds, are necessary beings. If Socrates had not existed, his essence would have been unexemplified, but not nonexistent. ... so being exemplified by Socrates if at all is essential to Socrateity, while being exemplified by Socrates is accidental to it. [Alvin Plantinga, "Actualism and Possible Worlds," in Michael J. Loux, ed., The Possible and the Actual: Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality, 268]

The Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga is well-known for his modal ontological argument for the existence of God, a modification of the original ontological argument first expressed by Anselm in the Proslogion. A version of the modal ontological argument can be expressed as follows:

1. It is at least possible for God to exist.
2. If God’s existence is possible, then necessarily, God does exist.
3. Therefore, necessarily, God exists.

The argument is expanded as follows:

1. It is possible for God to exist.
2. Therefore, God exists in some possible world.
3. Necessarily, God exists in some possible world.
4. Necessarily, God exists.
5. God exists.

Premise 1 seems true for certainly the existence of God is conceivable, thus it is possible for God to exist and therefore statement 2 is true. From statement 2, one arrives at statement 3 through the modal axiom S5. Since the definition of God is that He has necessary existence, therefore if God necessarily exists in some possible world, he exists necessarily (Statement 4). Therefore, God exists (Statement 5).

Another way to frame the modal ontological argument is taken from "Formulation 4" of the entry on "Ontological Argument" on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy (accessed Aug 20, 2022), and simplified and expanded as follows:

1. For any being x, there is a possible world w where x exists.
2. For any beings x and y, there are possible worlds w and v, such that x exists in w and v, while y exists in w and not v.
3. Being x is superior to being y as it exists in both w and y.
4. If being x exists in worlds w, y, z, while God exists in y and z, then being x is superior to God.
5. God, being defined as maximally great, cannot have any being superior to Him. Therefore, God must exists in more possible worlds than other beings
6. A being that exists in the actual world would exists in more worlds than a being that does not exist in the actual world.
7. God in order to be maximally great must exists in the actual world and all possible worlds.
8. God exists.

Premises 1 and 2 are statements about possible worlds. Statements 3 and 4 are normally taken to be true, based on the premise that existence is greater than non-existence. Statement 5-7 flow from statements 3 and 4 and the idea that God is defined as a maximally great being, which is defined as such for the purpose of this argument.

So here we have two slightly different versions of the modal ontological argument. Unlike Anselm's original ontological argument, these arguments have more meat in them, and does not seem to require us to hold to some idea that God is defined as "greater than that can be conceived," with all its attendant problems. Are these arguments sound then? Have Christian philosophers like Alvin Plantinga stumble upon a viable form of the ontological argument that does indeed, as Natural Theology, prove the existence of God without appeal to special revelation?

Analyzing the arguments

The first argument form looks sound. However, note here that the argument depends on how one interprets premise 1. What does it mean for God to "exist in some possible world"? Most certainly, if one means that God ontologically exist in some possible world, then certainly the argument is sound, but is that what one means by premise 1?

The second argument form looks a bit more problematic. This form is closer to the traditional ontological argument, but it deals with maximal greatness through linking it with existence in possible worlds. The possible issues with this argument are the hidden premises correlating greatness with existence, and the idea that the actual world is a possible world that we see of as actual.

Existence is certainly better than non-existence, but this this only applies for creatures who can differentiate between the two states. For non-creatures, non-existence could mean imaginery existence, as in the case of imaginery numbers in Mathematics or virtual particles in quantum physics. Therefore, the idea that existence is always better than non-existence does not apply to everything. While in the case of God (and all creatures) it is true that existence is better than non-existence, to assert that is to assume God (or at least creaturely existence as superior to non-creaturely existence) from the start and therefore cannot truly function as an axiom to prove God's existence.

The key problem: Actualist modal ontology

Both argument forms when analyzed seem sound, until one digs deeper. For the first argument form, premise 1 states that God exists in some possible world. But does this possible world truly and actually exist? For the second argument form, the hidden premise is that the actual world is a possible world that we see as actual to us. Presumably, individuals in some possible world w would see theirs as an actual world and ours as a possible world.

Underlying this is a commitment to an actualist modal ontology. What is an actualist modal ontology? An actualist modal ontology states that all modal entities truly and actually exist. How that is so divides the actualists. Plantinga's form of actualist modal ontology borrows from Platonism and differentiates existence from examplification. As seen in the quote above, for Plantinga, all modal entities exist as "things" or haecceities, which are analogous to the Platonic forms. In any possible world, these forms all exist but the actual thing exist only if the form is "exemplified" in any particular world. Therefore, the existence of Socrates in world w is due to the "exemplification" of "Socrateity" in that possible world. In possible world v however where Socrates does not exist, "Socrateity" still exists in that possible world v but "Socrateity" was not "exemplified" in possible world v.

According to Plantinga's modal ontological argument therefore, that God exists in some possible world can start as something as simple as the Platonic form of "God" being present in that possible world. Likewise, there is nothing essentially different between the actual world and possible worlds except in the perspectives of the ones in that world. The actual world in this case is a possible world that we are in. With this actualist modal ontology, things possible are more than mental conceptions but are possible existing objects.

Plantinga's modal ontological argument therefore seem to depend on an actualist modal ontology. It is a question if the argument can survive without actualism. For many of us, possible worlds are taken as hypothetical worlds, creations of the mind to explore alternate forms of the world. We are possibilists, and believe in one actual world where things ontologically exist.

Conclusion

The modal ontological argument is indeed a stronger argument that seems to point to the success of Natural Theology to prove God's existence. However, at least one variation of that argument by Alvin Plantinga seems to demand an actualist modal ontology which I do not hold to. Therefore, it stands to reason that the modal ontological argument has not been proven to be sound, and the goal of Natural Theology seems unrealized.

On ontology and realism

If you can predicate what-ness of light (quiddity), and you must or you couldn’t speak of it properly at all, then it has being. Quiddity = essence perceived through a thing’s “to be.”

— Josh Sommer (@1689Broadcast) March 25, 2022

You can’t measure a thing that has no ontology. Geeze. You are predicating a “to be” is a thing, then denying it has an ontology. And in doing this, you’re denying the law of contradiction. I can’t continue the conversation if such is maintained.

— Josh Sommer (@1689Broadcast) March 25, 2022

I have been busy with work and other stuff in real life, so unfortunately I cannot read and write as much as I would like to. I still get involved in Twitter discussions though, so this recent exchange has been helpful in illustrating one main issue of contention I have with classical theism.

Classical Theism, being formed in the Middle Ages and mostly complete by the high Middle Ages in the time of Thomas Aquinas, assumes a realist ontology. Everything that exist has real existence. A thing is made up of a substance and its accidents. Aristotelians focus on the fourfold causation that underlie each thing, and all things are explained by Aristotelian causation. As long as something exists, it must have a cause—material, formal, efficient and/or final.

Such an embrace of Aristotelian ontology commits the Classical Theist to assume that everything that is a thing must have real existence and be explanable by the four causes. But the problem arises as to whether all things have real existence at all. Just because something is a "thing," a noun, does not necessarrily mean that it has real existence. Now, here we are not talking about things like unicorns, which do not exist in this world but can be conceived to exist in a possible world. Rather, we are talking about things that exist in this world, but I would assert they do not have real existence at all.

In my interaction with Joshua Sommer, I had listed three things: Light, Gravity, and Color. But for the purpose of this post, I would like to look at a slightly more expanded list of Shadow, Light, Color and Gravity. It is my assertion that these things are examples of things that exist and yet do not have real (or ontological) existence. They are actual phenomena, but not things that have real ontological existence. These function as counter-examples to the idea that all things can be explained by Aristotelian causation, and each must have essences of their own.

What is a shadow? In physics, a "shadow" is an artifact formed when light to an object is blocked by another object. A "shadow" is not a thing as it has no mass or substance, energy or form. A "shadow" is an area where there is absence of light where the obstruction has cut off the light. During a solar eclipse, the moon moved across the day sky casting a shadow upon the surface of the earth, which we perceive as a solar eclipse when the day dimmed to twilight for a few moments during a full solar eclipse.

An interesting fact about shadows is that they can "move" faster than the speed of light. In a thought experiment, a huge screen with a height of a few light years is placed about 10 AU away from the earth. A cosmic laser flashlight is put in the place of the sun and shone upon the earth. The flashlight oscillates vertically 1 AU up and 1 AU down, with an average move speed of a quarter of the speed of light (c), as follows:

In this figure, the shadow of the earth will oscillate down and up as the torchlight oscillates up and down. This shadow will be moving up and down the screen faster than the speed of light, since the earth is closer to the rapidly moving torchlight than the screen. But we know that nothing can go faster than the speed of light, so how is that possible? It is possible because shadows are not real things. Shadows emerge from the relation of light source to obstruction of light. They are "real" in the sense that they exist, but they are not real in the sense that they have no essence or form. When a shadow moves "faster than light," what is physically moving is not the shadow but the light from the cosmic flashlight, which travels at the speed of light.

It can be argued that shadows are artifacts, so of course they have no essence. Well, let us look at the case of light. Light is a thing that everyone who is not blind can perceive. But what exactly is light? For some time, light was considered a wave, which was easily to understand until we discovered that light does not need a medium to propagate, which poses a problem for a traditonal understanding of waves. The wave-particle duality of light, with the discovery of the photon through the photo-electric effect, complicates matters even more. While hard to understand, scientists however have the relative luxury of ignoring how their findings affect our understanding of ontology. Philosphers and theologians do not have that luxury. So how do Aristotelians deal with the issue of light? That is a very good question.

The main problem with light and photons is that light is not matter; photons have no mass (effective mass through using Einstein's famous equation is not the same as actual mass). Photons are also transient particles, since they are present only when light is shining, unlike protons and neutrons that are always present as matter. How can something that has no matter has an essence? Light has no form either, and one does not even directly measure light. Light is measured by the amount of illumination (or energy) it gives, which is to say the amount of light is a measurement of its effect not the thing itself. Measuring luminosity involves taking in light, and the amount of light taken cannot be measured and then put back into the system, but rather the light is "used up" as its effect is measured.

Color is another interesting phenomenon. In modern physics, we understand that color is what our minds perceive through receiving light waves into our eyes that have the wavelengths of the visible light spectrum. In other words, color is subjective, as it requires a subject to perceive it. Color is still universally recognized in the sense that all men will see grass under the light of the sun to be greeen. However, it is universal not because it is an objective truth but because all human eyes work that way. Since it is perceived by the brain, it is always possible that an animal with a differently wired brain and eye will perceive different colors differently. Red might be invisible, blue might be greenish, and Ultra-Violet seen as blue to such an animal. Our actual perception of color will be different from that animal's perception, and who gets to determine which color is the "true" color of the grass under the light of the Sun?

Color as such is an emergent property at best. Unlike shadow or light, it also subjective. Therefore, it has no form and no essence, for there is no such thing as an objective property of "whiteness," "greenness" or that of any other color, for "whitenesss" for one creature may be "orangeness" for another creature. Yet, we have an objective idea of what these colors are, even though they are not objective, which shows that one does not have to have form or substance to conceptually exist.

Lastly, we look at gravity. Ever since Isaac Newton discovered his laws on gravity, we knew that gravity is proportional to mass but not why that is the case. With Einstein's contribution, we now know that gravity is merely the curvature of curved space-time, and the curvature is caused by the mass of the object. This new understanding of gravity however puts gravity in the same category as "Shadow," as something that is an artifact of something else. In the case of gravity, gravity is an artifact of curved space time. Since space time is curved, an object in order to preserve its space-time trajectory must curve towards the object distorting space time.

Recently, there has been an interesting discovery of something matching the hypothetical gravity waves by LIGO. However, such a discovery has no bearing on our perceptions of gravity since the gravity waves could very likely be a shock wave transmitted through the space-time fabric of the universe. From all these, we can clearly state that gravity has no essence and no form. As with "shadow," they exist as real physical phenomenon, but they don't have the essence and form Aristotelian essences require.

In conclusion, I believe I have shown four physical phenomena that actually occur, yet have no form and no essence. The fact is that actual occurence makes no difference as to whether something exists ontologically, which is to say it would have a real essence. Modern physics have shattered the naive ontological realism of Aristotle, and as it fails, so too should we be critical of classical theism with its many unspoken philosophical assumptions.

Book Review: Natural Theology, by David Haines

"Natural Theology" — a concept almost literally resurrected from the grave, has roared back into relevance with the growing ressourcement movement in Evangelical academia. In his book, David Haines seeks to recover this concept, claiming it is actually a supremely biblical concept held by the church until the 1700s at least. But is that really so? Were the Reformed wrong to explicitly reject this concept at the turn of the 20th century?

It is in this light that I have read David Haines' book, and have reviewed it here. An excerpt:

What is “natural theology”? The rise of presuppositionalism in 20th century Reformed thought has resulted in the rejection of any form of natural theology. In the early 21st century however, a focus on ressourcement resulting in a “recovery” of Thomism and Classical Theism has come with a “recovery” of natural theology and of course classical apologetics. In this light, David Haines has written a book seeking to “recover” and promote natural theology, asserting that natural theology has always been the Christian position and that the 20th century American Reformed church as a whole was wrong in rejecting it.

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Once more on General Revelation and Natural Theology

Thesis 5: God's existence is evident to reason, even though fallen human beings, because of sin, either deny God's eixstence or refuse to be grateful to him and worshp him (Rom. 1:20)

Thesis 21: The created order bears the imprint of the divine Logos, and humans are created in the image of God, which mans that the human mind can apprehend the order and structure in the creation, which is the basis of natural theology, natural moral law, and scientific laws.

(Craig Carter, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism, 307-8)

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom. 1:20)

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. (Ps. 19:1-2)

General Revelation is the revelation God has given to all creatures, showing them that there is a God, and that they have violated His Law (c.f. Rom. 2:15). Since it is given to all, it cannot be given to only the elites. It must be perspicuous to all, not to the intellectuals only. Therefore, as we see in Psalms 19, it is given without words, without reason. It is *just* there, intuitively grasped by all humans. That is the only way General Revelation can be truly general, not to a specified group of philosophers only.

In contrast to this, the ressourcement interpretation of Romans 1:20 reads Natural Theology into the text. For these new Thomists, General Revelation is Natural Theology, or at the very least Natural Theology is a major part of General Revelation. But where is this found in the biblical text? Where do we see in Scripture that one can derive from pagan thought true things about God? What then does it tell us when our new Thomists in their intellectual loftiness ignore the simple primitive tribes? Are we going to say that these jungle tribesmen do not have the true General Revelation at all, since none of them have even heard of the ontological argument or things to that effect?

General Revelation is General Revelation. Natural theology is natural theology, and the two are not each other. Most certainly, there can be overlap between the two (depending on one's definition of "natural theology"), but they are not the same thing. It is a travesty that in their zeal to "recover orthodoxy," our new Thomists are destroying the basis for reaching out to non-intellectuals and primitive societies.

Eikon: Neil Shenvi on Sociology as Theology

In the latest issue of Eikon, Neil Shenvi has written an article on the recent deconstruction work of "woke" historians and activists who will eventually destroy the Christian faith. An excerpt:

Second, these authors’ “deconstructive” approach to theology is necessarily a universal acid. Even if they weren’t explicitly committed to challenging evangelical doctrine broadly, their methodological approach makes such an outcome inevitable. This erosion is, perhaps, one of my greatest fears. I worry that pastors will embrace these books thinking that their application can be confined to, say, race alone. But once a white pastor endorses the view that he — as a white male — is blinded by his own white supremacy, unable to properly understand relevant biblical principles due to his social location, and in need of the “lived experience” of oppressed minorities to guide him, how long before someone in his congregation applies the same reasoning to his beliefs about gender? Or sexuality? At some point, he will have to reverse course and (correctly) insist that although he, like all of us, has blind spots and biases that will distort his understanding of Scripture, nonetheless it is to Scripture — properly interpreted — that we must appeal as our final authority on these issues. [Neil Shenvi, "Sociology as Theology: The Deconstruction of Power in (Post)Evangelical Scholarship," Eikon 3:2 (Falll 2021): 50]

You can read the entire issue of Eikon here.

Book Review of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Parts 6-8)

The final installment of my book review of the book Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind, consisting of Parts 6-8, is now on The Daily Genevan website here. In this 3-parter, I re-engaged the sciences from a presuppositional point of view, focused our attention on Yuval Noah Harari's fixation on humankind as opposed to real humans, and through that and his futurism exposes his idolatry, up to and including repeating the lie of the serpent "You shall be as God" (Gen. 3:5).

Harari's history of humanity is indeed a fascinating book, but it is also disturbing because of what it tells us about the anti-Christian vision of the futurist. Do read more about it in the review.

In response to Perl's call for a return to Neoplatonism

The alternative to the principle that to be is to be intelligible, therefore is the nihilism which afflicts so much of contemporary thought and culture. For if being is not what is apprehended by thought, then thought does not apprehend being. This in effect means that there is no being, since whatever we call “being” is not being but a projection, interpretation, illusion—in short, nothing. If reality is not as thought must apprehend it, then there is no such thing as reality. Conversely, if thought is not the apprehension of being, then all thought, in that it never apprehends being, is illusory. Nihilism may indeed be said to consist most fundamentally in the denial of the intelligibility of being. (Eric D. Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite, p. 111-2)

In his conclusion of his book on Dionysius, Eric Perl puts forth his promotion of Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism is treated as superior as opposed to what he sees as the nihilism that infects the modern world. While certainly nihilism is present in much modern thought, I do not agree that Neoplatonism is a better alternative.

Perl's argument against much of modern philosophy can be stated as follows: (1) If thought does not apprehend being, being is an illusion. (2) If thought is not the apprehension of being, then thought is illusory. (3) Therefore, if Neoplatonism is false, being and thought are illusory. (4) (Implied) Being and thought are not illusory. (5) Therefore, Neoplatonism is true. The problem comes with statements 1 and 2. Is it really true that apprehending being is necessary for the reality of thought and being?

Reality and thought are linked in Plato due to the idea of forms, in which apprehension comes about when one apprehends the form of things. One knows what fire is when one sees "fire-ness" in the object. Implicit in this view of knowledge is that the mind has access to the forms in order to apprehend an object. But is that truly how cognition works?

Let us think through a few questions: Can the mind apprehend a pink unicorn? How about a pegasus? Surely we can say that the mind can apprehend these things, but then these things are not real. But suppose it is said that their forms are derived from real forms, and thus even though the mythical creatures do not exist, the reason why we apprehend them is because the original forms exist and we can apprehend them. So let's try something different, something real. How about the wave-particle duality of photons? Can our minds apprehend the concept? I would think so. Pointing out that we can apprehend "wave" and "particle" does not help because "wave-particle" is not wave and not particle. Or from Math, can we apprehend the idea of transfinites, where again transfinites are not truly infinite and yet they compose infinite sets?

The thing is: Ever since the Scientific Revolution, the link between being and intelligibility has been strained to the breaking point. Our knowledge is not limited to what there is, as we are able to conceptualize new theories and new things. Our thought is virtually limited to what we can conceptualize. Reality of course remains the same. The world in Plato's time is more or less the same world in modern times. Photons existed as wave-particles in Plato's time just as it does in ours, except Plato did not know or understand modern physics. Thus, we see a separation between the world of being and the world of ideas. Reality remains the same, yet thought and cognition does not.

Since such is the case, I would propose that we need a separation of reality from the world of ideas. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the Platonic forms, and that objects have forms which impress themselves on the mind (Whether that is the best way to understand cognition I would not comment here). The separation however needs to happen between reality and thought. We must understand that conceptualization is a mental process that can operate apart from the world, and that has happened as we come to grips with the strangeness and counter-intuitive nature of the inner workings of reality. Reality or being is one thing; the world of ideas does have relation to reality but is able to transcend it altogether.

From a Christian perspective, we must hold to some version of that separation, since we believe in a God who is in many ways unlike us. To assert that God is a se (when nothing in reality is a se), and we are expected to understand what we mean when we say that God is a se, is already a conceptual leap from reality. We also say that there are the "secret things of God" (c.f. Deut. 29:29), which are certainly real and yet not known by us, thus we must create an extra category of real but not intelligible. Christianity therefore cuts against the identification of being and intelligibility, and those who hold to such an identification would come to face problems in their philosophies. Those holding to Platonism tend towards rationalism, while those rejecting rationalism tend towards mysticism, precisely because they continue to run with Plato's link between being and intelligibility.

If we separate being and intelligibility, we can have 3 categories: (1) Things real but not intelligible (secret things of God), (2) Things real and intelligible (most things), and (3) Things intelligible but without being (e.g. knowledge of God, Scientific paradigms). There is no need to reduce everything to intelligibility and thus become a rationalist (rejecting 1), or focus on being and thus treading the path of Dionysius (rejecting 1 and 3). If we take this paradigm, then we can reject statements 1 and 2 of Perl's argument, and therefore his case for Neoplatonism. What I suspect is happening in much of philosophy is a failure of imagination, and a stubborn clinging to the idea that unity of thought and being can be found in this world by Man.

Book Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Part 5): Induction and the History of Religions

Part 5 of my book review of Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is up at the Daily Genevan site, here. In this central part of my review, I point out the main problem with Harari's telling of history, which is the problem of induction. While the problem of induction is minimized in normal historical reconstruction since we can get an appoximation to the truth, looking especially into pre-history erases guide posts that alllow us to make such an approximation, as I argue in the review here.

After demonstrating Harari's problem with induction, I shift to the issue of religions, noting how Harari's view on religion is disrespectful towards all religions, and pays zero heed to what those religions actually say. You can read more about it in the review.

Book Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Part 4): Neanderthals and Harari's misinterpretation of Scripture

Here is Part 4 of my review of Yuvah Noah Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Once again, we look at Harari's views, this time concerning human evolution as it regards the Neanderthals. As we go deeper towards the main problem with Harari's narratives, I took a short detour and deal with Harari's misinterpretation of Scripture. Harari, being a non-Christian, is of course free to reject Christianity. He is not however free to misinterpret Scripture to say what he wants it to say.

The key point here is that Harari is not quite the vaunted historian or scholar others paint him out to be. A good historian will not make elementary errors on the history of science. A good scholar will not make elementary errors in the interpretation of the Christian Scriptures. We will continue further in further installments of the review.

Book Review: Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind (Part 3): History of Primeval human development - Preliminary Concerns

Primeval human history is an interesting topic, intersting particularly as it is a topic with a comparative paucity of evidence. In Part 3 of the review, I note some preliminary concerns I have on Yuvah Noah Harari's take on primeval human history, which can be read here.

Book Review: Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind (Part 2: History of Science)

What do the progressive globalists believe as it relate to science? Through an examination of Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens, I continue to explore the supposed history of humankind, as it relates here to the history of science here.

Book Review: Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind (Part 1)

In collaboration with Rev. Shane Anderson, the first installment of my review of Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind has been posted at the Daily Genevan here.

Book Review: Reforming Apologetics by J.V. Fesko

Dr. John Fesko was one of my professors when I was at WSCAL. He is a learned professor deep into historical sources and Reformed doctrine. He has however wrote a book on apologetics last year entitled Reforming Apologetics: Retrieving the Classic Reformed Approach to Defending the Faith, which stirred up some controversy due to its attack specifically on Cornelius Van Til and Vantillian presuppositionalism. Due to the subject nature, I decided to check it out when I can. I have finally read it and wrote a review of it, here. An excerpt:

With the resurgence of interest in Aristotelianism within the Reformed community, it should not come as a surprise that the topic of apologetics would come under the spotlight for ressourcement. Presuppositionalism after all is a novel system that began in the 20th century with Cornelius Van Til and/or Gordon H. Clark, whereas classical apologetics was the system utilized in the Medieval, Reformation, and Post-Reformation era.

In this light, Dr. John Fesko has taken on the task of “reforming” apologetics. According to Fesko, the 20th century turn to presuppositionalism is flawed and contrary to the Reformed tradition. While not necessarily against all aspects of presuppositionalism, stating for example his position that the TAG (Transcendental Argument for God) “can be a useful argument” (p. 137), Fesko rejects presuppositionalism as a whole.

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As a Clarkian presuppositionalist, I reject this approach to apologetics. And while I do respect Dr. Fesko's scholarship, on this issue I'm afraid he is way out of his depth.

Is there science before the Scientific Revolution?

If historians of science were to investigate past practices and beliefs only insofar as those practices and beliefs resemble modern science, the result would be serious distortion. (David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450, 2)

… they were operating within quite a different linguistic and conceptual world and with different purposes; and it is in the light of these that their achievements must be judged. (p. 9)

The second candidate for early modern revolutionary status is methodological—the invention and practice of the “experimental method” (according to the defenders of this thesis) by such sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientists as Galileo, William Gilbert, Robert Boyle, and many others. According to defenders of this theory, the sterile scholastic debates and syllogistic demonstrations of ancient and medieval natural philosophy came to an end, replaced by experimental science, with its firsthand observation and manipulation under controlled conditions. (p. 362)

For present purposes, I am inclined to define it [the word "experiment" in experimental method" -DHC] narrowly, by what I take to be its primary epistemological function: an attempt to confirm or disconfirm a theoretical claim about the nature or behavior of the material world by an observation (under controlled conditions if necessary) made for that purpose, or the gathering of data against which future anticipated theoretical claims may be tested. (p. 362)

Experimentation continued through the later Middle Ages, wherever it met a scientific need. (p. 363)

… what credit is left for Francis Bacon (1561-1626) popularly celebrated as the founder (or a founder) of experimental science? … what he and the Baconian tradition of the seventeenth century gave us was not a new method of experiment, but a new rhetoric of experiment coupled with full exploitation of the possibilities of experiment in programs of scientific investigation. (p. 364)

Where, then can we locate this elusive revolution of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science? I believe that Alexandre Koyré, who, in the 1950s and 1960s, disputed Combrie’s focus on experimental science as the revolutionary agent, has put his finder on the right place. The underlying source of revolutionary novelty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he argued, was metaphysical and cosmological rather than methodological. (p. 364)

Historian of science David Lindberg has written a book showing the intellectual foundations of modern Western science. In its elucidation of intellectual history, I find it compelling. However, Lindberg has seemingly asserted that ancient science is indeed "ancient SCIENCE." My question to that is: Can we actually called what we see prior to the Scientific Revolution "science"?

The question posed here is not to claim that there is no rich intellectual foundations for science prior to the Scientific Revolution. But for science to be "science," it must be distinct from anything that is not science, otherwise the word "science" has lost its meaning. This to me is my main objection to the whole idea of "ancient" or "medieval" science. Lindberg has held up Alexandre Koyré's thesis that the Scientific Revolution was "metaphysical and cosmological rather than methodological" (p. 364). From a philosophical perspective, that seems correct. But I think such is a partial picture, for a shift in metaphysical and cosmological perspective would surely affect one's methodology.

When one does scientific experiments today, one does not appeal to the divine or to spiritual forces as part of one's explanation for why things happen the way they do. The reason is that modern science is committed to what is called "methodological naturalism." That is indeed a philosophical commitment, yet it is necessary for modern science to be "science" as opposed to "philosophy" or "religion." Should science be committed to methodological naturalism? Well, if science is not committed to methodological naturalism, then where is the boundary between "science" and "philosophy," or "science" and "religion"? This is why I find Lindberg's definition of "experimental" in explaining one reason why there is a scientific revolution deficient. Judging by Lindberg's definition of "experimental," certain aspects of philosophy (e.g. that there is a God) and religion (e.g. the resurrection of Christ) can be termed "science," but we do not normally called these "science," do we?

It is because of the necessity of defining our terms properly that I think Lindberg's assertion of continuity between "ancient science" and "modern science" problematic. Rather, it is better to assert that there is a continuity between ancient natural philosophy and modern science. For "science" to be "science," there must be a commitment to methodological naturalism. That being said, I will assert that this is a limitation on science, for anything that is outside the realm of nature can still be true but it is outside science's purview. Thus, I will assert, contra Lindberg, that there was indeed a real scientific revolution that is more than just a shift in rhetoric (that marked the beginnings of modern science). I will further claim that the emergence of modern science does not imply the de-legitimization of anything that is non-science as disciplines that do not convey truth, since an a priori commitment to methodological naturalism precludes science from discovering truth outside of naturalistic events.

The history of Christianity and Science

One of the charges frequently leveled against the church is that it was broadly anti-intellectual—that the leaders of the church preferred faith to reason and ignorance to education. In that, this Is a major distortion. Although Christianity seems at first to have appealed to the poor and disenfranchised, it soon reached out to the upper classes, including the educated. Christians quickly recognized that if the Bible were to be read, literacy would have to be encouraged; and in the long run Christianity became the major patron of education in the Latin West and a major borrower from the classical intellectual tradition. Naturally enough, the kind and level of education and intellectual effort favored by the church fathers was that which supported the mission of the church as they perceived it. But this mission, interestingly, did not include the suppression of scientific investigations and ideas. [David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450 (2nd ed.; Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992, 2007); 148-9]

If we compare the early church with a modern research university or the National Science Foundation, the church will proved to have failed abysmally as a supporter of science and natural philosophy. But such a comparison is obviously unfair. If, instead, we compare the support given to the study of nature by the early church with the support available from any other contemporary social institution, it will soon become apparent that the church was the major patron of scientific learning. Its patronage may have been limited and selective, but limited and selective patronage is a far cry from opposition.

However, a critic determined to view the early church as an obstacle to scientific progress might argue that the handmaiden status accorded to natural philosophy is inconsistent with the existence of genuine science. True science, the critic might maintain, cannot be handmaiden of anything, but must possess total autonomy; consequently, the “disciplined” science that Augustine sought is no science at all. In fact, this complain misses the mark: totally autonomous science is an attractive ideal, but we do not live in an ideal world. Any many of the most important developments in the history of science have been produced by people committed not to autonomous science, but to science in the service of some ideology, social program, or practical end; for most of its history, the question has not been whether science will function as handmaiden, but which mistress it will serve. (p. 150)

The monasteries served as the transmitters of literacy and a thin veneer of the classical tradition (including science or natural philosophy) through a period when literacy and scholarship were severely threatened. (pp. 156-7)

The issue of time and (one of) Zeno's Paradox(es)

One of the problems with the whole ESS fiasco, and the so-called recovery of the historic doctrine of God by people like Reformed Baptist James Dolezal, is its uncritical appropriation of Aristotelianism as mediated by Thomas Aquinas. To put it bluntly, these "confessional scholars" are philosophically stuck in the 16th century. They are reasonably well-versed in the Scholastic literature during the Reformed and Post-Reformed period, but they ignore or downplay the reasons why philosophy has dumped Aristotelianism as a whole.

One major issue has to do with the problem of time. Time is something that is hard to grasp, only because we are creatures of time. How do we go about thinking about time when we are bound by time itself? There is no place whereby we can be "objective" about time and the passage of time. It seems prima facie that time progresses, does it not? We can conceive of time moving faster or slower, because time can appear to move faster or slower (even when it does not do so objectively) when we labor at things we enjoy or things we dread. But to conceive of a stoppage of time, or timelessness, or reversal of time, or time loops, all of these are conjectures not available to us except by extrapolation and guesswork. We can deal with it mathematically, but numbers are abstract things which we cannot conceived how it may or may not work out in real life.

One ancient paradox concerning the issue of time in general is Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Hare. In this paradox, the hare is ahead of Achilles by a certain distance (let's say 1 meter). As they race, both Achilles and the hare moved a certain distance in a certain time. In order for Achilles to overtake the hare, he must first cover the distance from him to the initial point of the hare. But during that time, the hare would have moved a certain distance (e.g. 0.1m). Achilles would then still be behind the hare, and must now race to where the hare is currently at. But at distance 1.1m, the hare would have moved 0.01m which Achilles needs to cover, but then the hare would move 0.001m, and so on. The paradox here asserts that if motion is possible, then Achilles would need to cover an infinite series of distances in order to catch up and overtake the hare. Since it is not possible to cover an infinite series of motions, the fact that Achilles can actually overtake the hare suggests that motion and change does not truly exist—they are illusionary.

For those from a scientific background, the "solution" to Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the hare seemed easy enough. After all, it is a mere addition of a set to infinity of (1 + 0.1 + 0.01 + 0.001 +...). Or rather it can be expressed as follows:

Therefore Achilles will pass the hare at distance 1-1/9m. There, problem solved, but has the paradox actually been resolved?

We must remember that the key point of the paradox is not that Achilles will not overtake the hare. Rather, the key point of the paradox is that true motion, true change, cannot exist. The argument is a philosophical reductio ad absurdum concerning the nature of motion and time. It is not an empirical question at all. Just as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, just because something is empirically seen does not necessarily imply that what is seen and what is perceived is indicative of true reality. Zeno's paradox is a question on reality itself, not empirically how things work. One might as well "disprove" Zeno by merely arranging a race between Achilles and a hare and showing that Achilles does in fact overtake the hare, easily, and it would still prove nothing. Why is the overtaking not a mere illusion, and that actually change is not real, but everything merely exists? Already, in modern physics under a B-series interpretation of space-time, time itself is a dimension and therefore nothing really changes, since the 4-D tesseract of space-time is "fixed" (in a universe without any higher dimensional beings or gods/God), and therefore space-time is determined right from "the start."

Science therefore cannot address Zeno's paradox. Since it deals with empirical reality, it cannot, until and unless there is a way to get us time-bound creatures out of the dimension of space-time (and I do not mean tunneling from one point of space-time to another point in space-time, but to be independent of space-time altogether). So how then should we deal with this paradox, but by rational philosophical inquiry?

One way, the way I think would address this paradox, is to point out how, as Achilles reached the next place of the hare, the time taken for each part in the series gets shorter and shorter. Let's say Achilles took 1 second to reach the hare's first position. He will then take 0.1 seconds to reach the hare's second position, and 0.01 seconds to reach the hare's third position. One would get a decreasing infinite series for the time traveled for Achilles to overtake the hare, and therefore it seems that we will never reach the "point" in time whereby Achilles overtake the hare. However, since there are two infinite series of time and distance, dividing the two infinite series gives us a finite (non-serial) speed of 1 m/s. One can therefore assert that the "infinite" aspect of the paradox is illusionary, since motion in terms of speed is not an infinite series but a finite number. Therefore, following Aristotle, I would say that seeing motion as a continuum instead of moving from point to point in space-time would solve the paradox quite nicely.

However Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the hare is solved, Zeno's paradox (not by itself) points to an even deeper issue concerning the nature of time itself (and thus indirectly opens the paradox again to mystery). We talk about time as "here," "before," and "after," or "now," "yesterday," and "tomorrow." But what exactly is this thing called "now"? John McTaggart has given an argument why time itself is not real. This is reflected in Zeno's paradox as one considers the infinite series of temporal instances Achilles must cover to overtake the hare. So while we can perhaps prove that motion seems real (since speed is a finite non-serial number), how do we, or can we, prove the reality of time? And if time is not real, then space is not real and motion becomes a mere mathematical number depicting the relation of two unreal things.

As with time, thus goes the notion of "eternity." "Eternity" is defined as an "infinity" with regards to time. When we say God is "eternal," what we mean is that God is infinite with respects to time But what does this mean when the notion of "time" itself gets questioned?

To untangle all these will not be easy, and this article is not meant to give all the answers to these questions, although I have suggested a preliminary approach here. The main point of this post rather is to show, by appeal to Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Hare, that issues concerning time and eternity are so much more complicated than our modern "confessional theologians" make it out to be. Adopting Thomism as orthodoxy is not a virtue but a step backward in the wrong direction. If we are to be interested in truth, then we should wrestle with the actual issues involved when we talk about terms like "time" and "eternity," or even "temporal attributes," instead of going back to the "Golden Age" of "Reformed Scholasticism," which definitely has its strengths but many weaknesses also, chief among them its wholesale embrace of Aristotelianism.

On the epistemic value of intuition

If, however, we cannot calibrate intuition by appeal to sense perception, then, presuming there are no other calibrating faculties in the offing, it would seem that we cannot calibrate intuition and so we have no good (i.e. independent) reason at all for taking intuition to be reliable. We arrive, then, at an apparently defensible skeptical conclusion about intuition.

Such a conclusion, however is not defensible. … This because we can just as easily argue, as countless skeptics have, that sense perception is itself incapable of independent calibration and so we have no non-epistemically-circular reason to treat its offerings as reliable evidence. The calibration concern is, after all, a completely general one.

[Joel Pust, Intuition as Evidence (New York, NY: Routledge, 2000, 2016), 105-6)]

This is because any attempt to calibrate sense perception must take its corroborating premises only from the deliverances of some other faculty, and in the case envisaged, intuition would be the basis of such a calibration of sense perception. (p. 106)

The problem of epistemic circularity is also deeper than the discussion to this point has revealed. (p. 107)

I do think Reid is right to insist that, in light of our inability to non-circularly justify any basic faculty, some reason needs to be given by those who would rely upon one faculty and yet reject the testimony of others. Absent such a reason, the empiricist’s refusal to accept intuition without independent calibration seems entirely unjustified and epistemically arbitrary. (p. 110)

Therefore, if she is to avoid complete skepticism, and its attendant cognitive suicide, but retain a principled skepticism about intuition, the empiricist must start by trusting all our faculties equally and then show that intuition can still be shown an unreliable source of evidence. (p. 111)

Supposing I have succeeded in showing that the epistemic credentials of intuition are no worse, ultimately, than those of sense perception, it is easy to take my means of showing this as indicating how little can actually be said for sense perception or for any of our basic faculties. My epistemic parity argument, then, might be said not to show why we actually have good reason to treat intuitions as evidence, but merely why we have no good reason to treat sense perception as evidence. (p. 122)

In his dissertation, Joel Pust attempts to show the validity of intuition in its utility in philosophy. Intuition as evidence is no more and no less valid than the use of the senses in gaining knowledge about the world. The alternative is a general epistemic skepticism.

Now, whether Pust has indeed succeeded in making his case can be argued. But in tying the validity of intuition to the senses, I do think Pust is on the right track for sure. Skepticism about intuition seems to merit skepticism in the senses as well. This seems to show, from where I stand, the failure of human philosophy to ever get out of skepticism. It seems to me that revelation from God must undergird all knowledge, for otherwise we are left with general skepticism. Yes, general skepticism cannot be proven, but if all systems fail, then that is what we are left with. General skepticism is therefore not so much proven, but stated in light of the failures of human philosophy.

Intuition therefore, is like the senses. Just as the senses can make sense of the world and yet are fallible and liable to deception, so likewise our intuitions about the world. From a Christian perspective, both derive their general validity from God's general revelation not from themselves, for apart from God's revelation, it is impossible for anyone to know anything of the world.

Scientism, broadly speaking

This, then, is what I mean by Scientism. It is not merely the misapplication of techniques such as quantification to questions where numbers have nothing to say; not merely the confusion of the material and social realms of human experience; not merely the claim of social researches to be applying the aims and procedure of natural science to the human world. Scientism is all of these, but something profoundly more. It is the desperate hope, and wish, and ultimately the illusory belief that some standardized set of procedures called “science” can provide us with an unimpeachable source of moral authority, a suprahuman basis for answers to questions like “What is life, and when, and why?” “Why is death, and suffering?” “What is right and wrong to do?” What are good and evil ends?” “How ought we to think and feel and behave?” It is Scientism on a personal level when one says, as President Reagan did, that he personally believes that abortion is wrong but we must leave it to science to tell us when a fetus enters life. It is Scientism on a cultural level when no scientist rises to demur, when no newspaper prints a rebuttal on its “science” pages, when everyone cooperates, willfully or through ignorance, in the perpetuation of such an illusion. Science can tell us when a heart begins to beat, or movement begins, or what are the statistics on the survival of neonates of different gestational ages outside the womb. But science has no more authority than you do or I do to establish such criteria as the “true” definition of “life” or of human state or of personhood. Social research can tell us how some people behave in the presence of what they believe to be legitimate authority. But it cannot tell us when authority is “legitimate” and when not, or how we must decide, or when it may be right or wrong to obey. To ask of science, or expect of science, or accept unchallenged from science the answers to such questions is Scientism. [Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York, NY: Vintage, 1993), p. 162]

Chance, quantum physics and methodological naturalism

Worst of all, the whole scheme [of methodological naturalism –DHC] works only with deterministic “laws.” Consider the decay of a radioactive nucleus, which cannot be predicted by scientific laws as we know them. The individual event of decay, in contrast to statistical prediction for many instances of decay, lies outside the domain of “law,” and so there is no way of saying whether it is “natural” or “preternatural” or “supernatural.” Biblical teaching indicates that God does it. And scientists cannot find a deterministic secondary cause, so they have no “natural” explanation at all. An event that has no secondary cause but only a primary cause, namely God, is usually considered “supernatural.” And yet myriads of such quantum mechanical events are happening every second. In terms of frequency, they are “normal” and “natural.” Conceptually, the distinction between natural and supernatural threatens to breaks down. This breakdown implies that the recipe for “methodological naturalism” has difficulties.

But methodological purists may attempt a rescue operation: Chance with a capital C fills the gap in naturalism. Chance is treated as a part of “nature.” That is one way of choosing to talk. … it also raises the question of whether methodological naturalism, in some forms, involves intrinsically the appeal to Chance as a substitute god. Such a move presupposes the absence of God, rather than presenting a coherent argument. (Vern S. Poythress, Chance and the Sovereignty of God, 130-1)

Quantum physics is a mysterious field of physics dealing with subatomic particles, even those smaller than electrons. The strange nature of quantum mechanics is such that weird phenomena such as tunneling and entanglement exists for these small particles. There is a real sense of indeterminacy in this field, expressed most clearly in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, where the uncertainty regarding momentum is inversely proportional to the uncertainty concerning position, of any one particle. Accordingly, the issue of chance and indeterminacy will come up in that particular field.

Vern Poythress, in attempting to reject methodological naturalism, uses a particular application of quantum principles in nuclear physics, concerning the radioactive decay of an atom, to disprove methodological naturalism. He argues that the indeterminacy of the decay of one radioactive nucleus results in there being no "deterministic secondary cause," and thus there is no real natural explanation at all for the decay of one radioactive nucleus. Thus, methodological naturalism is falsified, unless chance is taken to be a god.

Now, while I fully believe in the full sovereignty of God, Poythress' argument is not helpful here. The 'indeterminacy' of whether a radioactive nucleus decays can be taken to mean there is no secondary cause deciding whether any one particular radioactive nucleus decays or not, or rather the secondary cause does not operate in a deterministic manner. Take as an analogy the Boltzmann distribution of gas particles, which shows the statistical distribution of the energies of all gas particles. Any one particle will have a definite energy, but one does not know the particular energy of a particle when one measures the energy of the gas particles as a group (which translates to the temperature of the gas). Likewise, we perceive the distribution of radioactive decay of radioactive nuclei as an exponential decay curve, but do not know when any one particular radioactive nucleus will or will not decay. What is important here is that just because there is no determining secondary cause does not imply that there is no secondary cause at all.

This solution is not to make chance a "god," but merely to state the indeterminacy inherent in our knowledge of such small particles. Just like looking at gas molecules in a Boltzmann distribution, so likewise we look at nuclei of radioisotopes. Even if we could remove the high energy gas molecules, this does not change the distribution of the energies of the gas molecules from a Boltzmann distribution but rather a new Boltzmann distribution curve would form. So likewise, the thought experiment of putting two nuclei that would decay within the first half-life together would not result in two nuclei decaying within the first half-life, but that one will decay and the other would not.

The indeterminacy of an individual particle is situated in the determinacy of statistics. Therefore, Poythress' argument against methodological naturalism fails. Statistics is not a god of 'chance,' but an actual mathematical and scientific field. It no more indicates a lack of secondary causes than the use of statistics in dice rolling indicate the absence of secondary causes.

Social Justice, Critical Theory and General Revelation

In some quarters of American Christianity, there has been a defense of the usage of Critical Race Theory and other forms of left-liberal theories as being under the umbrella of "General Revelation." The defense is that, since the Bible does not teach these theories, therefore we can understand that these theories help us to understand the workings of the world as they are part of God's General Revelation, in the same way that the Scriptures does not teach Newton's laws of motions yet we accept them as true, as part of God's General Revelation. Such a defense is used to blunt the argument that these Christian Social Justice Warriors are reading into the Bible and distorting the Word of God, since it is self-evident that no one can get Critical Race Theory from a mere reading of the Scriptures.

I have always suspected there is a weakness in certain more recent Reformed works on the doctrine of General Revelation (e.g. Van Til, Horton etc.), in the sense that General Revelation is not defined clearly and seem to be ambiguous enough to tolerate theologians being able to smuggle in unbiblical theories into their interpretation of the world. So it would be helpful for us here to be clearer in stating what General Revelation actually is. According to Scripture, General Revelation has to do with informing people that there is a Creator God who is eternal and divine and glorious (Rom. 1:20; Ps. 19:1), and that they are all guilty of sin against God's holy law (Rom. 2:15). That is all! God's General Revelation doesn't even extend to scientific laws. And if one understands some basic philosophy of science, then one realizes that the natural sciences are an interpretation of the world, not an unmediated knowledge of the actual workings of the world. After all, that is what one gets from the process of induction: an interpretation of the raw data.

If such is what the natural sciences are, then how should one regard the social sciences, which are even more subjective and easily biased? Social sciences, even if they are done as stringently as possible, are even more fallible and more liable to be wrong. If natural science theories are not general revelation but interpretations of general revelations, then social science theories are most definitely not general revelation but highly fallible interpretations of general revelation! This is especially so when theories like critical race theory reason from highly disputed axioms in the first place, which increases its possibility of error to an exceedingly high degree.

So "social justice" and critical race theories are not general revelation, and have such a high possibility of error that it should not be taken to be true. Therefore, it is sin to impose such theories upon the church, and demand everyone in the church subscribe to these theories as truth upon pain of being "outted" as a "racist." Such activism is unbiblical, un-truthful and un-Christlike. It is to be the apostle of error, working contrary to the Lord of truth, calling good evil and evil good (Is. 5:20). It is a sin which needs to be repented of, an evil that grieves our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory.