SNOKE.TXT

Being Dr. David Snoke's article in the March, 1995, PERSPECTIVES
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SNOKE.TEX is the same article in "TEX" format.

Copyright 1995, ASA and Dr. David Snoke

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Date:    23-Mar-95 at 10:01   
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 The Problem of the Absolute in Evidential Epistemology

author: DAVID SNOKE, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
                     University of Pittsburgh
                     Pittsburgh, PA 15260

Abstract:

Great scientific advances have taken place on the basis
of the scientific method, while many have found faith and comfort via the
evidential apologetic of scholars like Josh McDowell and Hugh Ross. Both
the scientific method and evidentialism rest on inductive epistemology. Yet
in modern philosophy departments both the scientific method and
evidentialism are dead, because inductive epistemology is dead, and modern
scholars who follow them are considered naive.  Although induction has been
defended in this century by scholars like Wittgenstein and Reichenbach, it
is perceived to have failed because of the problem of the absolute; in
other words, it seems to provide no basis for absolute certainty.  I
propose dropping the search for "absolute certainty" altogether, since it
is meaningless, and argue, partly from modern language theory, that
inductive epistemology is self-consistent and that only inductive
epistemology provides the basis for science and universal ethics in the
Christian context.  Those who want a "mathematical" certainty in
epistemology, following Descartes and Kant, have in fact opened the door to
the widespread relativism in this century regarding both religion and
scientific matters.

{Introduction}

       The debate about science and Christianity is one of the great arguments
of our day. Some claim that science has proven Christianity false, or at least
made it unnecessary and irrelevant \cite{new}.  New Age proselytizers claim not
only that science has disproven Christianity, but has gone further to prove, or
at least support, Buddhism or other Eastern religions \cite{tao}.  Others have
maintained that almost all of modern science suffers from such a degree of bias
that Christians must take up arms, so to speak, against non-Christian science
\cite{creationist}. How can we enter into this jungle of viewpoints? Must we
take refuge in a high wall of separation between science and religion, refusing
to allow any connection between the two?

       I have previously\cite{snoke} said that Christian theology and science
do not exist in two unconnected worlds.  In saying this, I do not mean that
theology and science are identical, but that they share a unified epistemology,
that each can make claims about propositions that 
lie in the realm of the other.
In other words, although sometimes theology and science make different kinds of
claims about the same world, sometimes they make the {same} kind of claim
about the same world, and therefore can conflict. For 
instance, theology may say
that the universe has a beginning, or that some people love doing evil, and
therefore tread on the realms of astrophysics and 
psychology.   The situation is
essentially the same as the interactions between, for example, music and
mathematics.  While these fields are certainly not the same, each of these can
have implications for the other, as in a mathematical analysis of music theory.

        This view of the unity of things implies an {evidential}, or
inductive, epistemology. In evidential apologetics, we 
learn religious truths from the
world around us. Non-evidential apologetics sees religious truths as arising
from another place, a different world, so to speak.

        The evidential apologetic of Christians like C.S.
Lewis\cite{lewis}, Josh
McDowell\cite{mcdowell} and, recently, Hugh Ross\cite{ross} has great appeal to
many for precisely this reason, that Christianity takes its place in the
"real" world and not only in a "pretend" world with no tests of truth.  Yet
most Christian thinkers view such approaches as harmless naivete or useful
fiction. Similarly, modern science rests on 
inductive, "real world" logic, yet
modern philosophy of science essentially sees all scientists as engaging in a
naive exercise, since inductive logic is 
dead in the philosophy departments. The
objections of all these philosophers to evidentialism essentially rest on one
argument, which is the problem of the absolute, or the problem of the starting
point, in inductive logic. This question has remained at the center of critical
philosophy for hundreds of years, and most philosophers have resolved it by
rejecting inductive epistemology altogether.

        In this essay, therefore, I take a look at the problem of the
absolute. Is
evidential epistemology really unworkable? Can an intelligent person approach
both science and Christianity, indeed, all knowledge, via evidential
epistemology?

        Epistemology is hardly an abstract and dry subject. As the subject
of how we
know things, it has two intensely practical applications. First, on what basis
can I feel {certain} of anything I think I know? I can only act confidently
on the basis of things I feel sure I know. Second, how do people learn things,
that is, how do they come to have knowledge?  Our approach to teaching and to
conveying any message will depend on how we think people come-to-know. These
issues will remain central in this essay.

{Two Schools of Thought}

       In order to present the problem, let me start by describing the "naive
model" of knowledge, called the scientific method, which goes back at least as
far as Francis Bacon  in the 16th century \cite{bacon}. In this view, "data"
and "theory" are sharply divided.  "Data" represents all knowledge which is
perceived through the senses and recorded, perhaps on paper or magnetic tape,
perhaps only in the memory of a person's mind. A person can obtain this kind of
knowledge  "objectively," which means that the person can collect, or receive,
data in a such a way that the data remain the same despite the theories held by
the person. "Theory" refers to a general statement about the data, which a
person can create by using the imagination. A theory does not generally remain
the same. If a theory contradicts data, then the theory is false-- data act as a
judge of a theory.  To deliberately change data to conform it to a favored
theory is immoral, a falsehood.  If the two contradict, then the theory must
change, not the data, to make a reconciliation.

       Theories are quite useful because it is much easier to remember a simple
statement, such as "All people have two legs," than to remember a long list of
data, such as "Joe has two legs, Bob has two legs, Sally has two legs, etc."
Progress in science occurs as people create general statements which are
initially fictions of the imagination ("hypothesis").  These statements are
compared to data ("experiment"), which either supports or overturns them.  As
the amount of data increases that does not 
contradict a theory, the theory gains
greater trustworthiness.  A theory therefore has greater value the more it
provides {simplification} (it "unifies" the data) and has 
confirmation (it can be tested by comparison to data, which does not contradict
it.)

        Some readers may be surprised to learn that this picture of
science, still
taught in many textbooks \cite{RKC}, has been rejected as a description of
science by almost all modern science philosophers. Philosophers have rejected
the scientific method as an epistemology in this century for the same reason
that they rejected evidentialism in religion in the last century, because it is
inherently an {inductive} epistemology. While some may include inductive
thinking as part of their systems, they reject inductive thinking as a {
starting point} of epistemology, because of the problem of the absolute.

       Before addressing the objections to this model of knowledge, I wish to
point out that while some may refuse to extend this model to all knowledge, few
would deny that it applies to a great deal of "normal" knowledge beyond the
realm of the scientific laboratory.  Three examples illustrate this.

       First of all, very young children learn in a process very much like
this \cite{caplan}.  Confronted with a huge amount of new sense experiences
which they do not prejudge, i.e. "data," they constantly try to form simple
generalizations with which to organize the world around them. A  child
repeatedly tosses things off a high chair, and finds that 
they always come back.
An expectation, i.e., a "theory," is created that "what goes down must come
up."  After repeated trials, however, the parent may tire and items do not
return.  Faced with this contradiction between experience and expectation, the
child may then adjust the "theory" to "all things I throw down will come back
up to me for at least for a while."  This series of creating new, often
nonverbal, rules about life and overturning them on the basis of experience
continues for years, until perhaps the child tires of learning and decides to
stick with established rules, ignoring new experiences.   Language itself is
learned by repetition of associations of experiences, the experience of the
"sign" with the experiences of the "signed". These "experiences"  include
internal "feelings" as well as input from the five senses.  Chomsky
\cite{chomsky} and others have argued that certain innate "forms" of language
exist from birth as instincts, such as a sense of "circle-ness" or
"face-ness." Whether or not these particular senses exist, everyone agrees
that a child is a "{tabula raza}" concerning any {specific} symbolic
communication-- any child could learn either 
Chinese or English or American Sign
Language by the same inductive process of association of experiences (including
the experiences of internal feelings of circle-ness, beauty, guilt, sadness
etc.)  Since language requires induction, one can safely say that all people
start life as inductive thinkers.

       Lawcourts, similarly, adhere to rules of "evidence" (data) and
hypothesis.  Once evidence is admitted, it becomes the basis of fact which both
the theories of the defense and the theories of the prosecution must attempt to
explain.  A just judge never allows evidence to be thrown out or altered on the
basis of which theory he or she prefers \cite{greenleaf}.

       Biblical theologians also typically attempt to argue in the same way.
The statements of the Bible itself form the "data" which can not be altered,
while theology provides the organizing theory, which can and does change. This
approach formed the basis of the Reformation-- the Reformers insisted that
theologians must submit their theories to the test of Scripture, rather than
adjust the interpretation of Scripture to make it mean whatever the Church
wanted it to mean.  Modern evangelical groups teach the "Inductive Bible
Study" method. James Sire of Intervarsity Press has written a wonderful book
called {Scripture Twisting} which shows the dangers of attempting to conform
Biblical data to preconceived theories \cite{sire}. Intervarsity Christian
Fellowship (IFES) and similar groups train Christians to first read the Bible,
then draw generalities based on what they have read, instead of "proof
texting" their favorite ideas by taking verses out of context and thus,
changing their meaning.  Theology, in this approach, can progress for both
individuals and churches, even while the words of Scripture remain 
venerated and unchangeable.

       Why do people reject this inductive model of knowledge?  There are two
basic philosophical objections to this model. The first objection questions the
sharp distinction between data and theory.  Suppose a scientist writes down the
readings of a meter that he thinks indicates the positions of electrons.  He
does this to test a theory about electron motion.  Yet in testing that theory,
he relies on another theory, which is that the meter faithfully records the
positions of the particles.  If he obtains a contradiction, he may drop the
theory of electron motion, or he may question the theory that his meter is
reliable.  If he has a great deal of confidence in his meter, he will favor
dropping the tested theory, but he can never absolutely rule out that his meter
errs.  Therefore, the distinction between "data" and "theory" is better
represented as a distinction between "little theories" and "big theories",
i.e. theories that have limited scope and a high degree of confidence, and
theories which have much greater scope, encompassing other, more limited
theories, which require much more comprehensive testing to gain a high level of
confidence.

         Second, no theory can have the status of absolute certainty.  No
matter how
many confirming data exist, the possibility always remains that  new data will
come along which contradicts the theory.  Popper\cite{popper} is not consistent
when he says that a single contradictory datum can 
overturn a theory, since that
would require absolute confidence in the theory that the new datum is
interpreted correctly.  New contradictory data, however, can significantly
weaken a previously strong theory. Are there no theories, i.e., general
statements about experience, which we can know with absolute certainty?  The
problem is compounded when we turn the inductive method upon itself. Since the
inductive method is itself a theory of knowledge, what makes us believe it is a
correct theory? By its own terms, we cannot be absolutely sure that it is true!
This is Hume's \cite{hume}celebrated "problem of induction."

       With only theories, then, and none of them absolutely certain, it seems
that the scientific method, or inductive method, if generalized to cover all
knowledge, leads us to float in uncertainty.  We know nothing with absolute
certainty, according to this model. We seem to have no starting point, no
absolute, for arguing in favor of inductive knowledge. How can we escape the
sense of anxiety, the feeling of floating at sea, that arises at this prospect?

     This problem faced the philosophers of the 17th century, and Rene
Descartes\cite{descartes} seemed to find the way out. One cannot underestimate
the impact of Descartes. As Hegel said,

\begin{quote}
"Only now do we arrive at the philosophy of the modern world, and we begin
it with Descartes. With him, we enter into an 
independent philosophy which knows
that it is the independent product of reason, 
and that consciousness, the moment
of self consciousness, is an essential moment 
of truth. Here, we may say, we are
at home; here, like the sailor at the end of 
his long voyage on the stormy seas,
we may cry `Land!... In this new period the principle is thinking, thinking
proceeding from itself."\cite{sailor}
\end{quote}

     The apparent bedrock provided by Descartes is the {absolute} certainty
which seems to belong to certain statements. Starting with this kind of
statement as an absolute assumption, every logical deduction which follows has
the same absolute certainty.

        This framework of Descartes, which has its roots in Aristotle and
Aquinas,
I will call the "mathematico-logical" model of knowledge. In this view, a
distinction is made between "assumptions" and "deductions".  Assumptions are
propositions taken as absolutely true.  Deductions are all of the propositions
that can be deduced from the assumptions by the rules of logic. If the
assumptions are absolutely certain, then the deductions are also absolutely
certain, because the rules of logic 
essentially provide only a way of saying the
same things in different words, without contradicting oneself.  All such
absolutely certain knowledge is "{a priori}" knowledge, in Kant's terms
\cite{kant}-- not open to question based on experience.

       The important truth content, then, lies entirely in the assumptions.
Many philosophers, however, have become enamored with the process of deduction
because it can produce very surprising results-- it may take years to discover
all of the implications of even a few, very simple assumptions. The fact that
these deductions have the same absolute certainty as the initial assumptions
gives the impression that these results are a higher kind of knowledge than
empirical knowledge.  Nevertheless, they are merely restatements, no matter how
complex.

       The question remains of where to get the absolutely certain assumptions
required by this model. Descartes felt that the requisite absolutes could be
provided by the set of apparently self-evident, non-contradictable statements.
This set is small, containing such statements as "Nothing can not exist," or
"I think therefore I am." More recently, the evangelical theologians R.C.
Sproul, J. Gerstner and A. Lindsley have also argued in favor of limiting the
set of absolutes to these self-evident statements \cite{classical}.

      While scholars have deduced many powerful conclusions from apparently
self-evident propositions, for example Aquinas' proof of the existence of an
absolute, which we can call "God," reiterated by Sproul, Gerstner and
Lindsley, this approach quickly runs out of steam when one attempts to find
answers to important questions like 
the nature of God and the basis of right and
wrong.  Immanuel Kant overthrew all of Aquinas'\cite{aquinas} proofs for the
existence of God, essentially because all of the axioms they invoke require
knowledge of some sense experience, 
and therefore  probabilistic reasoning, i.e.
induction \cite{reymond}.  Yet Kant, a Christian, needed a basis for morality.
He tried heroically to found a moral philosophy purely on self-evident concepts
\cite{kant2}, arriving at the "universal" concept of "duty," but his efforts
have remained unconvincing to most.  Others arguing from "self-evident"
principles have deduced different ethics, such as Ayn Rand's "deduction" of
individual selfishness\cite{rand} as the absolute of morality. Rather than
accepting the limitations of an approach based only on the small set of
noncontradictable propositions, the 
Cartesian rationalist inevitably supplements
the set of absolutes with some unprovable assumption in order to reach the
values he or she wants \cite{goedel}.

       Existentialism, in particular as defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger
\cite{heidegger}, but with roots in Kierkegaard \cite{kierk}, overcomes the
hypocrisy of "self evident" rationalism by directly affirming that the set of
absolutes must be supplemented by unprovable axioms.  In this school, the Free
Man can generate absolutes by the exercise of choice, or a Kierkegaardian
"leap." This exercise of arbitrary choice represents the highest quality of
humans.  Of course, one person's absolutes may contradict another's, so that
they can not be considered absolute in the sense of being universal.  Instead,
each person works within a unique logical system defined by his or her chosen
axioms.  These axioms act as absolutes because the individual does not doubt
them afterwards.

       The philosophy of science of Kuhn \cite{kuhn}, which dominates modern
philosophy of science, is essentially existentialism as applied to science.
Science consists in his model mainly of  "problem solving," i.e., deduction,
based on "paradigms", which are axioms made by existential choice which then
act as absolutes until a "revolution" occurs which supplies a new paradigm via
a new existential choice.  Modern science is not superior to that of Aristotle;
modern scientists have simply made different existential choices of value in
judging science.  Polanyi's approach to science\cite{polanyi} is similar,
insisting that in a big universe, the scientist can not randomly collect data,
but rather must choose the interesting places to look based on definitions of
value.  Only existential choices provide these.  Following the work of Kuhn and
Polanyi, some in recent years have created a {false} unity of science and
religion by stripping science of that same claim to objectivity that others
stripped from Christianity in the last century. The new unity allows us to
believe what we choose to believe about 
either science or religion.  This is not
the kind of unity I have proposed\cite{snoke}-- I propose that theories be
approved or rejected on the basis of evidence in both spheres.

       In orthodox Christian circles, existentialism has a close parallel in
presuppositionalism, founded by 
Cornelius van Til\cite{vantil} and more recently
advanced by Gordon Clark \cite{clark}. In this framework, unprovable absolute
axioms are seen as necessary, just as in existentialism \cite{kierk2}.  The
Calvinist presuppositionalist does not see these as arising from arbitrary
choices, however, but as implanted directly in the spirit by God. Nevertheless
the presuppositionalist sees these axioms as essentially irrational (or
"non-rational" \cite{irrational}) in nature.  The Arminian, or "Free Will",
presuppositionalist has a closer relation to existentialism in affirming the
power of Choice as mankind's highest quality \cite{ryrie}. In this view the
axioms of Christianity are seen as universal, but essentially unknowable and
unprovable, until a person chooses to believe them.

       Existentialism seems to affirm the value of the individual but has
left many empty because they seek a 
universal absolute, or truth about objective
reality, not merely a subjective personal absolute. It also has served as a
justification for all kinds of systems that seem intrinsically evil, as for
instance Hitler's use of Nietzsche's Superman, because it denies a universal
morality. In the US, the conflict of 
personal absolutes has led to a new kind of
power conflict of values, documented in books such as {The Closing of the
American Mind}\cite{bloom} and {Illiberal Education} \cite{sousa}.

Existentialism also has no answer to mysticism, which has  blossomed in modern
Western society.   Having rejected non-axiomatic knowledge as uncertain and
embraced perfectly certain knowledge by irrational leap, the existentialist has
a hard time justifying the need to feel constrained by facts and logic at any
time-- even the concepts of the reliability of the senses and the need for
logical  deduction become mere choices of value.  A person who does not make
these assumptions can simply believe anything he or she wants, even if
confronted by direct evidence or logic to the contrary.  The mystic, therefore,
consciously chooses to forego logic and allow contradictions-- all knowledge is
equivalent to the choice axioms of the existentialists, 
with deduction following
only when one chooses.  Comparison of claims of 
truth is impossible; each person
remains sealed off in a subjective world alone.

       Modern religion and philosophy of science seem to have painted
themselves into the corner of 
saying that anyone can choose to believe anything,
and there is nothing we can do about it.  Calvinist presuppositionalists may
substitute an act of God for free choice, but they still allow that the
non-Christian has just as much logical consistency following pagan assumptions
as the Christian has following the Bible.  "Convincing" people to change their
minds about fundamental beliefs seems all but dead in Western society.  This
conundrum stems from the attempt to define all knowledge within the
"mathematico-logical" model of knowledge using Assumption and Deduction in the
tradition of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes. While recognizing many
weaknesses of other systems, no one in the mathematico-logical school, in which
I include Cartesian rationalists, existentialists, and presuppositionalists,
seems to ever question directly the validity of Descartes' model of absolute
certainty based on axiomatic reasoning. Even some mystics use a highly
sophisticated Cartesian logic to validate their approach.

On the other side lies the inductive approach following the scientific method,
outlined above, which relies on the senses and allows no absolute certainty,
often going under the names of empiricism and positivism.  This model is often
associated with the famous Scottish anti-Christian, David Hume \cite{hume} and
the atheists Mach and Wittgenstein\cite{wittgen}; in this century Reichenbach
\cite{reich} has advanced this school without anti-Christian rhetoric.
Christians associated with this approach, usually called "evidentialism" in
Christian circles \cite{rational}, include 
C.S. Lewis \cite{lewis}, John Warwick
Montgomery \cite{mont}, Josh McDowell \cite{mcdowell}, and Francis Schaeffer
\cite{sch1}.

        In thinking about the problem of the absolute, the first thing one must
realize is that it is only a problem for the mathematico-logical school.  In
other words, it is a problem {imposed} on the inductive school by the
mathematico-logical school. If the deductivist asks, "How can you be {
absolutely} sure that evidentialism is correct?" the evidentialist must answer,
"I am not and that doesn't bother me. Absolute certainty has no meaning within
my  world view. I can only say that I am very sure."  Few evidentialists have
had the courage to speak this way, however. 
Most have unwittingly capitulated to
the mathematico-logical school in trying to produce some absolutely certain
argument for evidentialism.  By its very nature, inductivism can not produce
absolute proof of inductivism. It can merely show self-consistency by showing
{strong evidence} of the validity of inductivism.

Deductivists will say that showing that inductivism is self-consistent does
not disprove any other 
epistemological system, since every axiomatic system also
can show self-consistency based on its own assumptions.  The inductivist has an
advantage, however, since 
all people start out thinking inductively.  To force a
change, the deductivist must show inconsistency starting only with the rules of
the inductivist system.

{Can We Be Absolutely Sure of Anything?}

       Let me affirm that perfect certainty is impossible.  The concept of
perfect certainty is absurd, even within the mathematico-logical model.
Consider the statement, "I am perfectly sure."  Who am I?  Am I sure who "I"
am?  An electron microscope will show that I do not end sharply; my skin fades
away.  Do "I" include all the shed skin of past years?  Memories that I have
forgotten?  If "I" am not perfectly defined, my certainty can not have a
certain definition.  The absolute certainty of an apparently non-contradictable
statement like "I think therefore I am" fades away when we realize that "I"
and "think" can not be perfectly defined.

        Since every proposition is formed from the words of a language,
which come
from mapping a broad set of sense experiences to a much smaller set of sense
experiences (for example, all my experiences of myself are mapped to the sound
of the word "I"), no proposition can have absolute certainty about its meaning
in the reverse mapping process, i.e, about reality.  Language, so essential for
thought, automatically rules out exactness.  
Aquinas believed that his proofs of
the existence of God were self-evident, but others later showed that the words
he used, like "time" and "cause," had origins in sense experience. One can
do the same with any so-called self-evident proposition.

       Having ruled out perfect certainty, however, do we then condemn
ourselves to a world of questions with no answers?  We have all known sophomore
college students who lost all sense of direction after exposure to philosophy
which called into question the certainty of everything.  There is no need for
this.  On the contrary, certainty is possible even where "perfect" certainty
is not.  To claim otherwise is foolishness.

       It seems that philosophers and theologians often have great difficulty
with the ideas of probability and uncertainty that working scientists do not
have.  For many students of  philosophy, only two possibilities exist, either
perfect certainty or uncertainty.  For scientists, a whole spectrum of degrees
of certainty exists, with perfect certainty and complete ignorance as the two
ends of the scale.  An exact number is viewed as meaningless by scientists;
every number purported to deal with reality must have an associated value of
"uncertainty" which reflects the accuracy of the measurements, the number of
"significant" digits in the calculation, etc.

       Many scientific propositions exist which are not "perfectly" certain,
yet are very certain, 
to such a degree that to doubt them would be foolish.  For
instance, according to microscopic gas laws the remote possibility exists that
all of the air molecules in the room you occupy may suddenly stack up along one
side of the room, causing you to suffocate.  This should not be cause for
concern, however-- the entire history of the world is not enough time for such
an event to become probable, even to occur once.  Scientists and statisticians
define the probability of some chance, possible events as "insignificant".  To
all intents and purposes, such an event is "certainly impossible."  A slight
possibility exists, for example, that a person jumping out of an airplane
without a parachute will not die.  Few philosophy professors would consider the
outcome uncertain enough to warrant a test! \cite{popper2}

       Room therefore exists for talking of certainty even in an
epistemological model which excludes "perfect" certainty.  Of course, we can
not be certain about everything; we are ignorant 
of many things.  We can be very
sure about some things, however.

       Rather than talking about perfect certainty we can talk about
being "sure enough"-- sure enough to act upon a proposition.  An engineer who
has designed a bridge may  not be "perfectly" certain that it will not
collapse but certain enough to walk on it; the man who sold all he had to buy a
pearl, in Jesus' picture of faith, may not have known "perfectly" that the
pearl was not fake, yet had enough confidence to take this dramatic action.

       I emphasize that we can become certain of religious propositions in
the same way in Christianity as in science: through laws of evidence and
experience.  Science and Christianity share a unified epistemology.  This may
seem quite surprising to many people, including many Christians.  What about
questions of value and meaning, as discussed by Polanyi?  I return to the
question of value below.

       This question of sureness is a watershed issue.  Although many
epistemological frameworks exist,  all epistemologies must belong to either one
category or the other, inductive or deductive.  We 
must answer the question, are
{all} propositional statements of language open to question and revision on
the basis of experience, or are some "protected" as unquestioned axioms?

 {What Does the Bible Say?}

        I have argued that the approach to knowledge in the Bible is the same
as that of the scientific method.  This even includes faith in the promises of
God Himself.  If this is so,  then does not faith in God have the same
vulnerabilities as scientific theory, in particular the absence of perfect
certainty?

       At this point, let me turn to the Bible, the source book for
Christians.  What picture does the Bible give of knowledge? Does the Bible tell
us to find the perfect certainty of the mathematico-logical model?

       Ever since Kierkegaard defined faith as an irrational, or
extra-rational, "leap" into a new set of perfectly certain assumptions, many
philosophers have taken this without question as the proper definition of faith,
and the hallmark of religion.  Many modern evangelicals speak like this also.
The Bible simply does not talk about faith this way, however.

       First of all, faith in the Bible is very often portrayed as coming
about due to {convincing}.  The picture is given of "reasons" \cite{b1}
which could be "examined,"\cite{b2}  with people being "persuaded"\cite{b3}
and "convinced"\cite{b4} by "proofs,"\cite{b5}  "witnesses,"\cite{b6}
"testimony,"\cite{b7} and "signs."\cite{b8}  All of these  terms indicate a
weighing of evidence, not an irrational leap.  As in the New Testament the
evidence centers around the works of  Christ, in the Old Testament believers
were reminded of the testimony of the signs, or evidences, of God's work in the
Exodus \cite{b9}.

       Second, faith in the Bible is spoken of as a quantity which people can
have {more or less} of-- there are degrees of certainty.  Jesus called
people's faith "great"\cite{b10} or "little."\cite{b11}  The apostles talked
of faith as something which could "increase"\cite{b12} and
"grow."\cite{b13}   People could become "more certain."\cite{b14}  If faith
means absolute certainty, how could it become greater?  "Doubt", or wavering
in faith, is frequently spoken of \cite{b15}.  In pragmatic 
terms, Christians do
doubt.  Should we tell them that they have no faith at all, then, that they
are
not Christians if they are not perfectly sure?  Or should we tell 
them that they
are not really doubting after all? \cite{doubt}

       A leap of sorts {is} enjoined in the Bible in relation to faith,
however.  This is the leap of obedience.  No matter how great the evidences 
for
a theory, one can not be  absolutely sure that its predictions will come true
before an experiment is made.  In the great chapter of faith, Hebrews 11, each
person without exception is commended for what he or she did on the basis of
faith.  What is "unseen" in each case is the future, while the past
 actions of
God provide the basis of faith.  A person watching mountain climbers may be
convinced that the rope is secure, but if asked to hang from the same rope
himself, he or she may irrationally refuse to make the leap.  Action
 requires a
work of the will in addition to mental  knowledge.  Of course, obedient action
can increase faith.  Just as in scientific theories, certainty increases when
tests of experience have been made.

       The Bible in no way endorses mysticism.  Certain passages have been
interpreted as self-contradictory, such as John's "I am not writing you a new
command... I am writing  you a new command."\cite{b16}  In such passages,
different senses of the same word are used for emphasis; a direct irrational
self contradiction is not intended, as is clear from the context.  The Bible
 is
a book which talks of Truth and Falsehood, Light and Darkness-- "Mystery" 
is
the  name of the Harlot of Babylon \cite{b17}.

"Being convinced" is essentially passive, requiring neither mystical nor
existential choice.  Some may say, with Aquinas, "Where then is the merit of
faith?"\cite{aquinas} If we are simply passively convinced of something by
strong evidence, what virtue is there in that? The Bible answers that there 
is
none-- faith is a work done in us by God, out of grace,\cite{ephesians} not a
work we do to save ourselves.


{Can an Epistemology be Free of Presuppositions?}


To show the lack of consistency of evidentialism, the deductivist argues that
the evidentialist {must} make some absolute, unquestioned assumption in
order to evaluate evidence, that is, in order to define knowledge.  Above, I
stated that the fact that children learn inductively puts the burden of
 proof on
the deductivist. The deductivist objects that this is beside the point.  That
they do so (if we agree on the evidence that they do) only implies that they
have { implicitly} made an axiomatic presupposition in favor of
inductivism.

       What could that mean? If we define a "presupposition" as a
propositional statement of language, then clearly knowledge precedes any
presupposition, since sensory experience, which we must call 
knowledge, precedes
and forms the foundation of language.\cite{frame} As  Augustine said,
\cite{august}
\begin{quote}
 "For who cannot
see that thinking is prior to believing? For no one believes
anything unless he had first thought that it is to be
believed."
\end{quote}

Similarly, knowledge can not require existential
presuppositions made by choice.  Small children acquire
knowledge before they form theoretical biases.  Knowledge
must precede choice; otherwise there is nothing to
choose.

On the other hand, if a presupposition can take the form of an
unverbalized bias, which people who have language may later
formulate in propositional form, then we can ask whether some such proposition
must remain unquestioned by all evidentialists.  In particular, does not the
evidentialist {assume}, first, that the senses are reliable, and second,
that more evidence of something makes it more certain?

       Here I must digress to clarify the distinction
between "unifying theories" in the inductive approach and
"unquestioned presuppositions" in the deductive method.  An
unquestioned presupposition is a statement which we take as true
with no possible doubt, an "axiom," in mathematical language.
A unifying theory is a way of organizing many facts of
experience into a single fact.  We typically talk of such
unifying theories as foundational, or as fundamental, or as
first principles, because once they are learned, then a host of
other facts follow as deductions.  Such unifying theories are
almost never learned first!  Fundamental theories of
physics, for example, can be learned only after years of study.

      Dreadful mistakes often occur when scholars
attempt to teach foundational, general theories like
axioms, before teaching the particulars of a field.  The fiasco
of New Math occurred when educators decided to teach the
basics of set theory to primary schoolers because all math
"follows" from set theory.  Even when students succeed in learning
foundational theories first, they memorize them as irrelevancies.  A person can
comprehend a unifying theory only after already comprehending
some particulars, or specific applications, of the
theory.  We think from particulars to generals, not vice versa.

             Although we start with particulars, nevertheless we like
general theories.  Unifying
theories act as "keys" to knowledge for those who understand
them, unlocking great mysteries.  In this way the "fear of the
Lord" acts as a grand, unifying theory which one can properly
call the "beginning of knowledge."\cite{b18}  Once grasped, the fear of
God puts all things in perspective in such a way that
believers often feel they knew nothing before, that they "walked in
darkness."  In the same way, the physicist who grasps the
theory of Special Relativity may feel he or she previously knew
nothing of motion, despite having driven a car for years.

       Consider the difference between a unifying theory and an
irrational assumption, however.  With both a unifying
theory and an axiomatic assumption, a choice is made by the
will to suppose something is true that is not known {a
priori} to be true.  In the model of the scientific method, or
inductive method, this is called
"hypothesis".  In each case, deductions are obtained from the
assumption.  In the case of the scientific method, however,
these deductions are compared to further experience, and
contradictions with experience invalidate the assumed
hypothesis or at least force a revision of it, while consistency
with experience increases one's level of faith in a theory.
Axiomatic assumptions of perfect certainty do not allow this.
Also, a hypothesis is also built out of some set of other
theories with smaller scope, in other words, particulars, or
"data".  An axiomatic assumption, in the mathematico-logical
model, claims to build on nothing.

       Having clarified this distinction, then, I can affirm
that evidentialists "assume" (in the sense of positing a fundamental theory)
that the senses are reliable, etc. Inductivism is a general, unifying theory.
An element of the irrational does exist in the process of formulating a
hypothesis necessary for creating a general theory.  Yet belief in
successful theories (whether scientific or religious) is not
mere irrational value-choice, because certainty can be ascribed to them
by tests of consistency.

        The fact that deductivists exist proves that inductivists do not
necessarily
make inductivism an {unquestioned} presupposition! As discussed above, all
people start out as inductivists.  Yet some become deductivists, precisely
because they question the foundations of inductive thinking and become less 
sure that its primary assumptions meet tests of consistency.

{The Certainty of the Senses}

        I have stated that evidentialists "assume" as an imperfect theory
that the
senses are reliable and that more evidence of something makes it more certain.
Since these assumptions remain, in principle, open to question, the
evidentialist does not violate self-consistency by making an axiomatic
presupposition like the deductivist.  Before we pass over these assumptions too
lightly as "not absolutely proven," however, we would do well to think about
what the opposite assumptions really mean.

First, to assume that the senses are not reliable does not mean merely
 that the
knowledge gained from the senses is {incomplete}. Every evidentialist
recognizes that knowledge gained from the senses tells only part
of the story; therefore, the probabilistic approach to truth
arises. The opposite assumption is that {none} of the
information from the senses is truly knowledge, that the senses
(alone) tell us nothing. The evidentialist says that the senses
tell us {something} about reality; those who reject this assumption say
that they tell us {nothing} about reality.

How could the senses tell us nothing real? If we merely
passively receive sensory inputs, we have at least knowledge of
the emissions of some source. One can postulate that Someone Out
There deliberately presents us with information that is false
our whole life long, so that every sensory experience gives a
false view of reality. In that case, we still have knowledge of
how that Someone works. Our reality {is} then the world of that
Someone's deception.

As a matter of definition, we can call the senses "infallible," as Jonathan
Edwards \cite{edwards} did.  If "reality" is the sum total of our experience
minus our memory and imagination, then the senses convey reality perfectly,
since one can define the senses as the way we experience whatever it is we
experience. As Edwards argued, what we typically call our senses "deceiving
us" comes from incomplete sense experience, not "wrong" experience.

Simply defining reality as whatever we experience, and the senses as the
perfect conveyors of that, may bring scant comfort to many people, however.
What makes us expect that certain things will happen again? The question of 
the
"reliability" of the senses, whether or not they tell me something "real,"
has more to do with our expectation of repeatability than with the origin of
what we sense. Things that are not "real" can vanish; deceptions can stop
suddenly. How do we know that things will not suddenly vanish into thin
air?\cite{objective}

Of course we do {not} know with absolute certainty that things will never
just vanish into thin air. A nuclear bomb may go off tomorrow. Indeed,
Christians believe that the world will one day vanish, that "the sky will be
rolled up like a scroll" in the return of Christ. The inductive assumption 
(for
example, of Hume \cite{hume} and Reichenbach \cite{reich}), that more evidence
gives more certainty, comes from a present-tense {sense of expectation}, or
"sense of certainty", we have that things we have experienced often will occur
again. Logic can take us no further.

Language comes from the same sense of expectation.  We learn a language by
repeated association of one experience (the "signed") with another experience
(the "symbol.")   There are, in fact, many non-repeated things in life,
experiences which we must simply leave as open questions.  Finding a "meaning"
consists of finding a language map, a definition, and definitions come only
from
repeated association.

A person who wishes to deny that repetition increases certainty must therefore
call into question his or her own use of language.  If a person says "You just
assume that repetition increases certainty. I don't make that assumption," then
one can ask, "Why do you use the word `assumption'?  Why don't you use the word
`flibber' instead?"  The person uses that word because repeated usage has given
that name in the English language to the referent.  The person does not switch
randomly between the word "assumption" and the word "flibber" because he or
she is {certain} that "assumption" is the "right" word.  This certainty
comes only from repetition-- there is no axiomatic "proof" of language
definitions.

Any language is tied to successful unifying theories.  A "theory" is any
rule for grouping together certain diverse experiences in one category, under
the same name, while ignoring other experiences as irrelevant and not needing
names, which is precisely what language does.  Science is merely language with
finer distinctions between phenomena than people ordinarily make-- the coining
of new terms is indispensable for science \cite{gregory}.  The converse also
holds. Anyone who would reject the scientific method must also reject all
language.  Unless one believes that the English language descended from the
heavens directly into his or her brain (something like what Plato believed) 
then
one must see that language requires inductive thinking.


{The Question of Ethics}

        One may concede that inductivism can provide a self-consistent
basis for
interpreting everyday experience, i.e., that the scientific method works for
{science}. But for a complete world view,  do we not need absolutes of right
and wrong?  How can a world view which has no perfectly certain propositions
provide an ethic?

        The inductive/empirical approach to knowledge, as I
have said, is often associated with  Hume, who was vehemently anti-Christian
\cite{hume2}. Because the Christian scholars of his day had largely embraced
metaphysics based on speculation of abstract axioms, for Hume this meant the
rejection of religion {per se}. As he says at the conclusion of his {
Enquiry}\cite{hume},
\begin{quote}
"If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance, let us ask, does it contain any abstract reasoning 
concerning quantity
or number? No. Does it contain any experimental 
reasoning concerning matters of
fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can be nothing 
but sophistry and illusion!"
\end{quote}
Hume's empiricism evolved into the
positivism of Mach and Wittgenstein, so named because of Mach's rejection of
concepts of "value" and "meaning" as existential, non-measurable
quantities and his insistence on "positive" experience.  Hume and Mach
believed that knowledge that has no connection with experience is fantasy. I
concur.

       Polanyi, however, showed that all science requires
beliefs about "value" and "meaning" \cite{polanyi}.  He is
widely felt to have dealt scientific materialism and positivism a fatal blow.
In a big universe with many places to look, concepts of value and meaning
define
the interesting, or "good," places for observations.  Random
data collection with no purpose is not science.  Yet science
which restricts itself to observation of nature can not produce
these concepts.  I concur with Polanyi on this point.

 Where do value and meaning come from,
then?  Polanyi essentially saw these as arising from existential
choice.  Does the Christian agree?  Many Christians have
argued for a separation of scientific and religious
epistemology on this basis, e.g., Howard van Till \cite{hvantil}.
Science deals with ever-changing theories and data; religion
deals with absolute, unquestioned assumptions of value and
meaning.

       The Bible does not make such a distinction. "Good" and
"evil" in biblical terms have very concrete
definitions.  "Good" is that which God loves and will reward,
and "evil" is that which He hates and will punish.  The
statement, "That is good," in the Christian ethic, therefore,
has the same nature as a statement like "Tomorrow it will
rain."  Each makes a claim about an as-yet-unobserved fact of
the world of experience, in one case, regarding the judgments of
the real God in the universe of time and space, and in the other
case, regarding weather in the same universe.  We
expect to observe both by means of the senses.

       For the Bible-based Christian, then, ethics proceeds in
the same way as science.  Rather than making deductions
from prior assumptions about good and evil, the Christian
attempts to answer questions such as "Did God really
command that for me?" by a process of theory-making and
evidence.  Christians grow and change in their understanding of
ethics, i.e., in their "wisdom."  Part of that process may even include
questions about the validity of the inclusion of certain passages in the canon
of Bible. It may also include ongoing evaluation of the validity of "internal"
sensations of the commands of God, as universal "moral laws" or personal
"leadings of the Spirit."

       In the post-Christian West, since belief in the
revelation and universal judgment of God has ceased, morality
can not be defined in absolute, concrete terms.  We feel a need
for universal morality, though, and therefore philosophers have
attempted to construct universal norms.  Without a
connection to universal consequences, however, any attempt
at producing a universal morality must come down to
arbitrary choices.

       In practice, however, these choices are not arbitrary.
As Nietzsche argued, most people in society pick
up their values from the "strong man" of that society.  For
them, morality is concrete as for the Christian-- people make
evaluations, from experience, of the desires of the strong man, or "god,"
and the consequences of disobedience.  Each person obeys his or her
own "god".  The "free man" equals the man whose god is
himself. He has only two real choices: randomness, or following his natural
animal lusts.  While he may dignify his choices with names like "the creation
of beauty,"  the free man who has broken free of the societal strong man
generally ends up turning to the second choice, carnal
pleasure-- witness the centrality of sex in contemporary art.

       I conclude that all real ethical choices arise from decisions
made from analysis of experience-- which is the god most to be feared: God,
the local strong man, or the unfulfilled sexual desire?  Of course, one must
believe that the  god exists, and has spoken.  A God Who exists only as a
construct, Who never gives commands nor enforces them, has no relevance in the
real world.

        Christian ethics is then {absolute} in the sense that it involves
{ultimate} and {universal} judgments, not in the sense that anyone is
absolutely certain that any one proposition of ethics is absolutely certain or
absolutely well understood in its implications.  In this way historical
Christianity is unique.  No other world view based on evidence and inductive
reasoning can provide a satisfactory ethic.\cite{cults}  
Scientific materialism,
which {a priori} excludes data which could imply intervention by an ultimate
God, can not provide an ultimate ethic.

In principle, science could generate a universal ethic by demonstrating that
all people have the same sense of "goodness=C3=C3 and "badness." While evidence
for the existence of such "natural law" has important implications for
apologetics, restricting ethics to such an approach 
breaks down for two reasons.
First, because of sin people will lie about what they perceive as good and
 bad.
C.S. Lewis=C3 statement\cite{lewis} that no one could imagine a country where
people "bragged of running from battle" makes less sense after the Viet Nam
war-- many people did brag about running from battle. C.S. Lewis might also
have
listed as unthinkable in his day a country where mothers marched in the streets
for the right to kill their babies in the womb. Second, such an approach does
not show universal bad consequences of things perceived as "bad." There is no
justice in this world. Therefore, positivists like Mach could say that the
perception of "badness" is no different from the perception of "redness" or
"blueness," i.e., inconsequential.  The Bible, on the other hand, makes the
claim that an omnipotent God has spoken intelligibly and unambiguously in space
and time (the world of science) about  the consequences of right and wrong for
all people.

        The late Francis Schaeffer, one of the most influential Christian
philosophical writers in the twentieth century, addressed this issue at length
\cite{sch1,sch2}.    In the twentieth century, the world of our experience and
the world of religion have been made into two separate worlds.  "Religious
truth" has no interaction with the data of experience, the realm of science.
Therefore, for many people the practice of religion has faded away.  Schaeffer
coined the term "true truth" for the truth claims of Christianity, meaning
that the  truth of Christianity deals with the real world of our  experience.
The stories in the Bible of Adam and Eve, Moses and  Joshua, and Jesus and the
Cross occurred in real, space-time points in our universe \cite{sch3}.  The
Bible does not  present its foundational stories as myth and allegory.  Rather,
characters have  extensive genealogies, interact with other historical figures
such as the kings of Babylon and Egypt, and live in places  with geographic
reference points.  The genealogical, historical,  and geographic details in the
Bible are specific to the point of  becoming boring for some readers, but show
without a doubt  that the writers viewed the stories as occurring in the same
world as ours.

       Because the stories of the Bible occur in this world, no
claim of the Bible can be completely divorced from a scientific
implication.  Henry Morris of the controversial Institute for
Creation Research properly emphasizes this point \cite{morris}.
One may easily say that the purpose of the Bible is not to
convey scientific data, but that
can not eliminate the grounding in reality that even
statements of ethics have-- if Moses never existed, for instance, then one can
hardly see the commands attributed to him as originating from the oracle of a
real God.   Without that grounding in historical reality, ethics must indeed
come from nowhere-- from the arbitrary choices of existentialism, or from the
conflicting opinions of conscience mixed with self interest.


{The Question of Authority}

        This unity of religious values and science on the basis of
experience may
seem especially strange to some in the context of 
biblical Christianity. Doesn't
the Christian make the Bible an "absolute"? Science deals with repeatable,
measurable events in the present and theories that make testable predictions,
while the Bible records unreproducible, dogmatic stories from centuries ago.
How can the two compare?

       Such an antithesis indicates an improper understanding of
the role of authority in science.  No scientist, no person, has
any hope of directly testing through experience even a
fraction of the truth claims presented in life.  How many
scientists, for instance, can hope to directly observe the W-boson
which led to a Nobel prize for those who claimed to
see it, which required a multibillion-dollar particle collider for its
observation?

Very early, as children, we learn to evaluate second- hand information from
the claims of messengers, or "authorities." While a child may start by simply
believing everything the authorities say, the problem will come, as it did for
Europe in the  1200's, when authorities contradict each other.  Then a person
must develop theories of which authorities to believe, based on experience.
This process involves experience with the person who claims authority.  What is
the likelihood that this  person will bring false information, either
maliciously or by  error?   History, as a science, deals with exactly this
question, as do law and journalism.   The complete rejection of authority, an
immature alternative response,  leads to an extreme narrowing of knowledge.
\cite{mystic}

       Does science on the basis of authorities allow for tests
of predictive theories?  Any historian will affirm this.  First,
one can predict that other reliable authorities will concur, if
they are found.  Second, one can predict that details which
remain available for observation (e.g. archeology) will give
corroboration.

       The Bible comes to us as a purported authority about
things which have occurred in the world of experience.  We
have every right to expect, then, that the Bible will satisfy
normal tests of historical validity.

What about the concept of
inerrancy? This belief, that the Bible, since it comes from God, never errs in
any proposition it affirms, raises the Bible to a higher level than mere
historical authority.  As Sproul\cite{reason} and
Hackett\cite{hackett} have argued, the Christian need not come
to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible by leap of faith.  Starting with
the Bible as a historically valid authority, a person can come to faith in
Christ and then evaluate Christ's statements about the Bible contained in
itself,
in a  "bootstrap" process.  Some Christians do come to the
Bible by irrational leap, as the Mormons come to their books.
They have no argument against the Mormon or any other
cult, as a result.  Evidentialist epistemology allows comparison of
religious truth claims on the basis of evidence.

    Perhaps no issue brings this dogma/science dichotomy into focus better than
the question of  miracles.  If I  embrace something like Hume's definition of
probability of truth based on prior experience, how can I then believe in
miracles, in  particular, the miracles of the Bible?  Hume ruled out miracles
based on this approach, since if we have never seen a miracle,  the probability
of one occurring, according to laws of induction, must approach zero.

     To address this, I must first formulate the proper
definition of a "miracle".  Some atheists have accused
Christians of a very silly kind of self-contradiction: defining
a miracle as "something impossible," they then see Christians
as believing that something impossible is possible.  Clearly,
Christians would define a miracle as something possible, not
something impossible!  We also cannot embrace the popular
definition of miracles as "things that happen all around us."
To do that reduces the idea of miracle to merely something that
is good, but otherwise indistinguishable from other things.  As
presented in the Bible, a miracle is a mighty act of God which
He does to accredit a messenger or to glorify His name.

     I have argued that a person may come to a belief in God
inductively, on the basis of evidence. Given a belief in God, no
one should find it hard to believe that God has the power to do miracles in
the universe He created, including speaking words to individuals and even
stopping history to judge the world.  Since we
find records of miracles in the Bible, we would have reason to
disbelieve these only if we have a philosophical bias against
miracles, since the texts are otherwise reliable history.  The fact that we do
not see miracles of the same kind now does not provide evidence against
the biblical miracles. The Bible itself indicates that miracles occur rarely
and dramatically, not randomly and frequently.

Note that the Christian ascribes certainty to the existence
of God, from this belief deduces that miracles are possible, and then sees
historical evidence for such.  If one tried to establish the occurrence of
miracles apart from the existence of God, in other words, to
prove the existence of God entirely on the basis on miracles, as
some would like to do these days, then such a proof must surely
fail Hume's test of experience.  Despite a great number of
claims of modern-day miracles, the number of these in which the
hand of God is undeniably present is very small.  Many who have
relied on the miracles alone as evidence of God's presence have
either needed to become extremely gullible or else have lost
their faith, as documented by Philip Yancy in his book, {
Disappointment with God} \cite{yancey}.

      A miracle violates the standard "law" of nature. Yet no
modern philosopher, Christian or non-Christian, accepts the
19th century view of physical laws as inviolable laws or even as
causative agents.  The presently expressed "laws" of nature
are nothing more than inductive theories of varying certainty
and levels of approximation of the observed behavior of nature,
what the Christian would call the "normal" behavior of God.
The distinction between miracle and law is the same as that
between special and general revelation-- God makes Himself known
partly by things that occur regularly, and partly through
things that occur rarely.

Because miracles accredit the messenger who claims to bring God's word and
will, the stories of miracles are inseparable from the message of the Bible. In
the  18th century, many philosophers,  tried to deduce everything
important in religion from scratch,  without need for reference to the Bible.
In doing so, they hoped to prove the validity of the Bible, but they undermined
the "specialness" of the Bible and any hope for generating an ethic within an
inductive approach.  I have maintained that both ethics and science can arise
from an evidential approach to experience. Yet as I argued above, this does not
mean that one could generate all knowledge from science 
and the study of nature,
without input from the revelation of God, as though the Bible were merely some
superfluous supplement to science.  The Bible offers not only a general theory
about the universe, but also "news," in the terminology of Walker Percy
\cite{percy}, or "revelation," which can not be deduced  independently.  Like
other news, it comes to us via  "authorities" which we can judge.  That news,
to a large part, is the story of the unique, miraculous interventions by God
that convey to us His personality and His will for us.  Far from bypassing the
Bible, I maintain that belief in the miracles of the Bible can be reached
through inductive thought, and this in turn provides the basis for ethics.

{The Question of Sin}

        So far, I have argued that evidentialist, or inductive, epistemology is
self-consistent, in that it does not require unquestioned, irrational axioms
either for science or for ethical values, when the evidence for miraculous
communication from God is allowed as input for ethics.  Does the evidence force
us to conclusions, though? What about the existence of 
sin and its effect on our
reason?

Cornelius van Til \cite{vantil}, the founder of presuppositionalism,
affirmed that all young children have from birth the
presuppositions necessary for knowledge. He did not see these as propositional
in nature, but as the ability to "see" God in the world, what I would call an
inductive outlook. He insisted, however, that later rejection of God entails a
voluntary choice of anti-theistic assumptions to replace these inborn
presuppositions, to blind oneself to the evidence of God. The 
non-Christian must
indeed make irrational assumptions to rule out the testimony of God which the
Bible says appears in  nature \cite{b18}. Christian belief therefore 
 requires a
change of presuppositions once again.

        I agree that that sin leads us to make, by an act of the will,
"unquestioned
axioms" which {preclude} knowledge of God or which excuse us for our sinful
behavior.  While we all start out thinking inductively, reality often becomes
too painful and we simply choose to disbelieve certain experiences.  The
 pain of
facing our own sin is one of the most powerful reasons for this kind of
"denial" \cite{sproulath}. The Holy Spirit must break down our barriers and
lead us to question those unquestioned assumptions in order for us to come to
know God and interpret the world correctly.

        The question remains, however, how large a set of
assumptions must change for someone to begin to have knowledge of God, and
therefore, in the presuppositionalist view, to have understanding of anything.
Must we begin by presupposing that the entire Bible is true?  Such a notion
implies that no one but Christians with  a proper concept of Biblical
infallibility can know God. One deviation from proper doctrine and a person
becomes a heretic, an unbeliever, and knows "nothing."   Or must we presuppose
merely the existence of God?  If so, then a  God with what 
characteristics?  The
God of the Bible?  Or  a stripped-down God with only a few philosophical
attributes  such as eternity?  The proper definition of God is so difficult
that to talk of presupposing God before knowing anything is bizarre.
Christians, in fact, commonly talk of their knowledge of God growing year after
year for their whole lives.

I do not see the work of the Holy Spirit as the mere replacement of one set of
unquestioned, irrational axioms with another set of unquestioned, equally
irrational axioms.  Rather, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sinfulness and
leads us to call into question any and all assumptions we have made, first and
foremost those assumptions we have made to excuse our sin.  
A proper recognition
of the possible effects of sin on human reason demands that a person not insist
on {absolute} certainty of any proposition, including theological ones.  Yet
as discussed above, this does not mean that we must abandon ourselves to the
wishy-washiness of liberal religion, never certain of anything and never
offending anyone.  The Holy Spirit also demands that 
we act on the truth when we
know it.  We can be "very sure" of some things, and we must not retreat when
we are "sure" that God has called us to action.

The Holy Spirit must therefore primarily open us to {evidence} that
overturns our false presuppositions and supports Christian ones.  I can testify
from my own evangelistic experience that this openness is sufficient for
conversion.  When I see a person truly open to new 
ideas, questioning his or her
own assumptions, weighing evidence and asking questions, I expect that it is
only a matter of time before that person will become 
a Christian.  Such a person
is not a Christian yet. Nevertheless a Christian and a non-Christian who are
both committed to such an honest approach to the evidence 
of experience can have
dialogue and attempt to persuade each other of their viewpoints, without a call
to simply "change presuppositions by faith." As Francis Schaeffer often said,
"Honest questions deserve honest answers."

Many philosophers have gotten caught up in the effect of
unifying theories (what some call "presuppositions") on basic knowledge.
Belief in a certain theory changes the "meaning" of many experiences. For
example, a person may  look every night at the stars and simply 
think of them as
"a  bunch of stars." If a person believes in astrology, however, a sign
in the
heavens like a comet may mean something important, while
if a person understands modern astrophysics, it may mean something
different. But though certain beliefs may affect the meaning of
certain experiences,  leading one to see them as
either supporting or contradictory evidence for some theory,
elimination of the theory does not eliminate these experiences
as knowledge! Experiences which make up part of the
"background" of life, such as the stars, can
remain in the memory.  Therefore as some theories become less certain, one can
critically evaluate new theories based on experience, without first adopting
those theories.  The non-Christian can be {convinced} to become a Christian.
I am one example.

Both presuppositionalists and I would say that
people come to a mature belief in God when they "assume" that
God exists and start to make deductions on the basis of this
belief.  It takes the Holy Spirit to bring about this world view
change.  Basic, underlying assumptions, which they call presuppositions and I
would call unifying theories, alter the way we see everything.

I differ with presuppositionalists in saying, first, that the
path up to this change of world view, or new assumption, is {
continuous}, not disjoint with the past.  No matter how fast the
process may occur, a person moves to a new world view only out
of dissatisfaction with the previous world view. This dissatisfaction occurs on
the basis of unsatisfactory experience, evaluated as evidence.
Second, I maintain that within the world view of
Christianity, tests of consistency and falsification still occur.
"Certainty" of one's faith, and consequently one's ability to act
consistently,
increases or decreases based on these ongoing tests.

Very few people come to God first because of a
scientific or historical argument. The first "evidence" of God
comes from our heart feelings in response to the world around us
(e.g. guilt and beauty.) I share a common perspective with most
presuppositionalists in their valuing of this "internal" knowledge
of God, which I call internal evidence and see as falsely
placed opposing external evidence. It is a false dichotomy to sharply separate
"feelings" and "senses," since feelings are sensed by the body just like
sounds! The atheist inevitably must seek to  explain these feelings as mere
illusions. In this case, the  Christian apologist must respond in kind-- a
complex argument  deserves a complex response.  To refuse to meet the atheist's
argument, merely "presupposing" God, weakens faith. Far too
many Christians are effectively neutralized by some non-Christian
intellectual argument, taking refuge in presupposing God but
never again able to evangelize with the confidence they once
had.

{Who Gets the Upper Hand?}

        It should be clear by now that an epistemology which
allows science and Christianity to discuss the same things
must therefore allow the possibility of conflicting claims.  This is an
uncomfortable proposition for many Christians.  The same is true for any
theoretical scientist who faces the  prospect of an experiment made to test his
or her theory.  Yet a  theory which is falsifiable, in other words, which makes
predictions that can be tested, has the possibility for a
confidence level much higher than an unverifiable theory, if its
predictions hold true.  Unfalsifiable theories are parlor games,
and so every good scientist seeks to find ways in
which his or her theories can be tested.

       By constructing epistemologies which do not allow any
experience to conflict with Christianity, some have felt that
they could protect Christian belief.  On the contrary, such
attempts undermine Christian belief by making it irrelevant. On
the other hand, some have allowed contradiction between
the claims of science and Christianity, but have fallen into one
of two camps that award all the victories to one side.
On one side are the "liberals" who change the teachings of
Christianity on a yearly basis as new scholarly theories come up
in the world.  On the other side are the "fundamentalists" who
feel free to throw out any scientific data that contradict
cherished doctrines.   Both of these ignore the scientific method, or inductive
method, which distinguishes between theory and data, or rather,
between theories of greater and lesser scope and consequent
uncertainty.  Christian doctrines represent "theories" of
interpretation of the biblical "data".  Therefore in assessing
a contradiction between a Christian doctrine and a scientific
theory, the Christian must not only ask if the scientific theory
follows from the data, but also whether the doctrine follows
from proper exegesis of Scripture.  The proper exegesis of
Scripture involves the sciences of linguistic study and history;
even defining exactly what passages belong to the canon of the
words of God is a science.

     I have stated that belief in the Bible ultimately derives from sense
experience interpreted inductively, i.e. by the scientific method.  Some may
object that this makes science judge over Scripture.  In one sense, I can say,
"Of course it does." A gross and outrageous disagreement with experience
weakens any religious truth claim. In another sense, I can say, "Of course it
does not."  It does not make the pronouncements, for example, of non-Christian
scientists more authoritative than those of Christian experts in exegesis.
Science for the Christian must always be interpreted {within} the framework
of the unifying theory of the Christian world view.  Here presuppositionalists
have made their greatest contribution.

       The Christian position is that "general revelation,"
the communication of God available to everyone in nature, and
"special revelation," communication directly only to a few
prophets, cannot contradict, since the same God generated
each.  Nevertheless, at any point in time, each Christian, and
for that matter every person, carries some degree of internal
"tension" due to contradictions between the theories he or she
holds.  While the mystic embraces contradictions, the Christian
must have a constant goal of eliminating contradictions in the
pursuit of Truth.  This can occur either by the gaining of new
information or through reformulation of exegetical or scientific
theories.  This basic faith in the truth of Christianity does
not imply irrationality, however.  Like the scientist
who continues to believe in the conservation of energy despite
data apparently contradicting it, the Christian can have a deep,
underlying knowledge of the basic consistency of Christianity, which prevents
"blowing with every wave" of apparently contradictory data.
I would love to say that I do not see any contradictions between
Christianity and science, or internal to either system.  In
fact, I see many apparent contradictions between the two and within each, but
I do not see any of these as so damning, in
the light of the overwhelming supporting evidence, that
either system must come crashing down.  Instead, I daily seek to
increase my understanding and revise improper presuppositions.

No one gets the "final word," then.  Certain scientific theories are "very
certain," and so are certain doctrines of Christian theology. Other aspects of
science and theology seem to demand revision.  Neither is free to operate
independently of the other.

 {Conclusion}

   I have not here presented an apologetic for Christianity.
Instead, I have attempted to establish apologetics on the basis
of evidence as valid from an epistemological standpoint.
My argument has been as follows.

\begin{quote}
(1) The absolute certainty of deduction from axioms is illusory. Apparently
self-evident, noncontradictable propositions always end up open to doubt after
all, or else as meaningless tautologies, because they all must be formed from
words of a language, and all language comes from a vague organization of prior
sense experiences. Systems like existentialism, which create absolute axioms,
provide no certainty for the validity of their original axiom of choice.
\end{quote}

\begin{quote}
(2) Certainty is possible via induction, although "perfect" certainty is not.
This sense of increasing certainty with increasing evidence comes from the way
we are "programmed" at birth, from the form of language itself.  It is
possible to doubt the validity of this preprogramming, (evidentialists do not
need to invoke an {absolute} first axiom) but only at the expense of
doubting the validity of language itself.
\end{quote}

\begin{quote}
(3) God speaks to us in this fashion, via propositions in human language with
inexact meaning and imperfect justification, but with adequate certainty to
demand action.  This message comes through the special miracles of revelation
that have occurred in the real world of our experience. Although we have an
"internal witness" to God's existence and commands in our heart feelings,
these alone, without the propositional revelation of the Bible, do not suffice
for us to build an ethic or a relationship with God, 
because of the mind-dulling effects of sin.
\end{quote}

\begin{quote}
(4) These propositions and commands form the basis of our most fundamental
assumptions about all of life, including our ethics, which in turn provide the
basis for science. Our certainty in them, i.e., our ability to act on them,
comes as we see the validity of their origin and implications in terms of the
normal tests we make of truth claims.
\end{quote}

 Too often I have heard evidential approaches to apologetics characterized as
compromises successful for the masses but philosophically invalid. Certainly
some apologists have not adequately addressed the issue of
epistemology, but this does not invalidate their approach.
Quite the opposite, I affirm the evidential apologetic as the {only}
valid apologetic. To call a person to "choose" faith without
adequate reason is to invite commitment to folly because of
the charisma of the evangelist; to wait for God to "zap"
someone into the proper presuppositions, for example when the
magic incantation of Scripture is read, is to deny the work of
the Holy Spirit in convincing people through their reason and
ultimately to deny a part of our humanity, our rational part.

    Nevertheless, I hope that no one will interpret
"evidence" too narrowly. A proper evidential apologetic must
include the questioning of presuppositions and biases, but in
doing so remains {evidential} as long as the basis of
calling these into question remains experience. Too, we must not eliminate
personal experience and feelings as {evidences}. As
professional counselors often say, "Feelings are facts." A
proper evidential apologetic should include evidence of the
experience of people-- do people feel a need for God? A fear of
God?  Do the lives of believers change? Do some people seem to
experience God in a direct way?  Evidential apologetics need not
deal only with archaeological digs and astronomy.

     A full apologetic would involve a discussion of the entire
process of weighing evidence by which a person comes to a
Christian world view.  I see this process as involving the
following steps:

\begin{quote}
(1) We start by inductively learning who in our
lives may be trusted as reliable authorities. These may be
parents, if they are trustworthy, or other persons, whom we learn to trust on
the basis of a pattern of consistency of action and words.
\end{quote}

\begin{quote}
(2) These trustworthy authorities then present us with
information about events in history regarding the acts and words of God,
whom they claim exists.  Faced with these claims which come from
otherwise reliable sources, we decide inductively on the basis
of our experience whether they "make sense"-- in other words,
if the world around us appears to have design, if our own heart
feels a need for and a conviction of the presence of God, and if
the actions of people around us agree with the description of
mankind in the Bible.  A more skeptical person may also desire
to see corroborating historical and scientific evidence.
\end{quote}

\begin{quote}
(3) If we find that these evidences agree with the message, we can then
decide to adopt the "theory" of the Bible, organized by the
most consistent theology we know, and act on it, interpreting
the world around us based on this premise.  Within
this new theoretical framework, we continue to test our theory
by predictions and tests of internal consistency, which causes
us to have more or less faith as time goes on.  We also continue
to form subtheories by hypothesis and induction that deal with
all the things of life, such as ethical issues, based on the
commands of God, and scientific data, based on the design and
purpose of God in creation.
\end{quote}

     I can not escape the feeling that the predominance of
presuppositionalist and quasi-existentialist apologetics betrays
a feeling that the evidence is insufficient to bring a truly open-minded
person to believe in Christ; that there is {not} a
compelling case for the existence of God.  Suppose a man is
thinking about jumping in front of an oncoming truck.  If we
wanted to convince him not to jump, we would appeal to the great
body of evidence that showed that people who jump in front of
trucks die.  He might not listen to us if he did not want to,
but that would not change our approach. On the other hand, if we
{wanted} him to jump in front of the truck, we might well
appeal to Cartesian philosophy.  One hundred deaths do not {
prove} that you will die if you jump in front of the truck!  The
mode of our apologetic will depend on which side we think the
evidence really lies.  I personally find the case for
Christianity compelling, the evidences satisfactory, without a
need for irrationality.

Francis Schaeffer based his fruitful evangelistic approach
on the premise that "The Christian must have the integrity to
live {open} to the questions `Does God exist?', and `Is the
content of the Judaistic-Christian system truth?'"\cite{sch1}(emphasis mine)
or, even more to the point, "The Christian himself should
always be willing sincerely to reexamine these questions as to
the possibility of his being `taken in' by his Christian
commitment."\cite{sch4} Does this imply uncertainty and lack of
confidence?  On the contrary, as in the case of the senior
scientist who examines carefully a purported perpetual
motion machine, the willingness to consider the evidence for the
other side stems from a confidence in one's own position.  The
people who refuse to consider arguments against their cherished
views are usually those who fear that their position is
weak.
       The implications of my epistemology extend further than
apologetics, however. The flow may go the other way. Christian
theology, as an imperfect theory of humans, must change in the
light of scientific data that affects the interpretation of
Scripture. This does not require liberalism, which puts modern
science in the position of absolute supremacy over the Bible,
but does require humility and the ability to admit errors and
ignorance. I marvel at the audacity involved in altering
significant doctrines held by the great body of the Church
throughout history and minds such as Augustine, Calvin, and
Edwards. Thus I view dimly any approach to Christianity which
begins by casting aside the orthodox understanding of Scripture.
However, I also feel that the wisdom of the whole Church in framing
its beliefs must grow over time in the same way that the wisdom
of an individual ought to grow as he or she matures. Therefore
we must not automatically resist change and
reformulation of theology in the light of scientific and
historical research.

Although it may sound strange, eliminating the need for absolute
"mathematical" certainty as the starting point for thought leads to real
certainty based on strong evidence, in the Christian 
context. Setting up certain
propositions as unquestionable ultimately gives a person no defense against
arbitrariness and irrationality.

PERSPECTIVES Article Footnotes 

{Acknowledgments}. I thank Dr. R. Jones of CERN, Geneva,
Prof. R. Hammer of Louisiana State University and Prof. F. Skiff
of the University of Maryland for challenging and uplifting,
though not always polite, discussions on these subjects.
{bibliography}

\bibitem{new} E.g. {New Scientist}, 8 August, 1992.

\bibitem{tao} E.g. G. Zukav, {The Dancing Wu Li Masters},
(Morrow, New York, 1979).

\bibitem{creationist} E.g. I. Stonehocker, {Creation-Science
Dialogue} {\bf 8}, 5-6 (May 1981).

\bibitem{snoke} D. Snoke, "Toward the Unity of Theology and
Science," {Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith} {\bf 43},
No. 3, (American Scientific Affiliation, Ipswich, MA,
September 1991).

\bibitem{lewis} C.S. Lewis, {Mere Christianity}, (Macmillan, New York,
1943).

\bibitem{mcdowell} J. McDowell, {Evidence that Demands
Verdict}, (Here's Life, San Bernardino, 1972).

\bibitem{ross} H. Ross, {The
Fingerprint of God}, 2nd ed., (Promise, Orange, California,
1991). A newsletter is available from "Reasons to
Believe," P.O. Box 5978, Pasadena, CA 91117.

\bibitem{bacon} E.g. {The Philosophical Works of Francis
Bacon},  ed. J.M. Robertson (Routledge, London, 1902).

\bibitem{RKC} E.g. Richtmeyer, Kennard and Cooper, {Introduction to Modern
Physics}, (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1969).

\bibitem{caplan} For a readable example of modern scholarship on early
childhood, see F. Caplan, {The First Twelve Months of Life}, (Bantam, New
York, 1978), from the Piaget-influenced Princeton Center for Infancy and Early
Childhood. As a father of four, I also claim my own observations in
justification of the claim that children learn everything, including language
and "common sense," inductively.

\bibitem{chomsky} See e.g. {Chomsky: Selected Readings}, J.P.B. Allen and
P. van Buren, eds. (Oxford University Press, London, 1971); Noam Chomsky, {\em
Language and Politics}, C.P. Otero, ed. (Black Rose Books, Cheektowaga, NY,
1988).

\bibitem{greenleaf} S. Greenleaf, {The Testimony of the
Evangelists}, (Storey and Sage, Newark, 1903), reprinted in J.W.
Montgomery, {The Law Above the Law}, (Bethany, Minneapolis,
1975).

\bibitem{sire} J. Sire, {Scripture Twisting}, (Intervarsity
Press, Downers Grove, 1980).

\bibitem{popper} K. Popper, {Logik der Forschung},
7th ed., (Mohr, T\"ubingen, 1982).

\bibitem{hume} D. Hume, {An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding}, (London, 1748); {Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion}, ed. N. Kemp Smith (Bobbs Merrill, Indiana,
1977).

\bibitem{descartes} See e.g. R. Descartes, {Principles of
Philosophy}, ed. and trans. E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1911-12).

\bibitem{sailor} Hegel, {WW XV}, 328, as quoted in {Hegel's
Concept of Experience}, M. Heidegger, (Harper and Row, San
Francisco, 1970).

\bibitem{kant} I. Kant, {Kritik der reinen Vernunft}, (Riga,
2nd ed, 1787), {Critique of Pure Reason}, (Macmillan,
London, 1968).

\bibitem{classical} R.C. Sproul, J. Gerstner, and A. Lindsley,
{Classical Apologetics}, (Academic Press, Grand Rapids, 1984).

\bibitem{aquinas}  E.g. {Summa theologica}; see
also F.C. Coppleston, {Aquinas}, (Penguin, London, 1955).

\bibitem{reymond} R. Reymond, in {The
Justification of Knowledge}, (Presbyterian and Reformed,
Philadelphia, 1976), calls Aquinas an "evidentialist" because he reasoned on
the basis of imperfect sense evidence; yet Aquinas saw himself as deducing
self-evident conclusions with absolute certainty.

\bibitem{kant2} I. Kant, {Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten}, 1785;
{Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals}, L. W. Beck, trans. (Macmillan,
New York, 1990).

\bibitem{rand} Ayn Rand, {The Virtue of Selfishness} (Signet, New York,
1970).

\bibitem{goedel} Starting with Laplace, another deductivist school of thought
avoided this problem essentially by eschewing any concept of morality, i.e.
definitions of "ought" rather than "is."  Only deductions based on the
"laws" of nature and mathematics could be held as certain.  This school
started to fall apart at the beginning of this century when many scientific
"laws" turned out to be mere approximations. Godel put the final nail in the
coffin when he showed that {no} logical system of pure assumption and
deduction can prove or disprove all statements which can be posed within that
system.  Certain proofs require an axiom of choice-- elements of sets chosen
 for
no self-evident reason. {Any logic which restricts itself to self-evident
statements can not give a complete description of the system in which it is
expressed.}  (See e.g. Godel, {Monatshefte f. Math. u. Physik}
\underline{38}, 173 (1931) in {From Frege to Godel}, J. van Heihenoort,
ed. (Harvard Press, Cambridge, 1967); for a very readable account see D.R.
Hofstadter, {Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid,} (Basic Books,
New York, 1979).) Atheists like Bertrand Russell, who in the early part of this
century contrasted the certainty of mathematical reasoning with the apparent
arbitrariness of moral and religious reasoning, found their own system falling
to that same enemy, arbitrariness.

\bibitem{heidegger} E.g. M. Heidegger, {Basic Writings}, and
{Nietzsche: Volumes I-IV}, (Harper and Row, San Francisco).
for an interesting review of Nietzsche and Heidegger's
influence, see Ref. \cite{bloom}.

\bibitem{kierk} S. Kierkegaard, {Either/Or} trans. Walter
Lowrie, (Anchor Books, Garden City, 1959); see also S.U.
Zuidema, {Kierkegaard} (Presbyterian and Reformed Pub.,
Philadelphia, 1960).

\bibitem{kuhn} T.S. Kuhn, {The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions}, (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962).

\bibitem{polanyi} E.g. M. Polanyi, {Science}, {\bf 113}, 1308
(1968); {The Tacit Dimension}, (Doubleday, New York, 1966).

\bibitem{vantil} C. van Til, {The Defense of the Faith},
(Presbyterian and Reformed, Philadelphia, 1955).

\bibitem{clark} For a review see R. Nash, {The Philosophy of
Gordon Clark}, (Presbyterian and Reformed, Philadelphia, 1968).

\bibitem{kierk2}  In fact, Kierkegaard might well be called a
presuppositionalist.  In {The Sickness unto Death}, trans. H.V. and E.H.
Hong (Princeton Press, Princeton, 1980), Kierkegaard 
writes an eloquent call for
a return to Christian orthodoxy. A presuppositionalist would find little to
disagree with in this book. Kierkegaard states that to reject Christ is a sin
worthy of eternal condemnation, yet he rejects giving {reasons} for faith as
unworthy of a Christian, like a lover giving reasons for his love.  (Of course,
it is one thing to give reasons for love, and another thing to give reasons for
the existence of the loved-- if a stranger claimed that the fiancee did not
exist, being merely a deception of a con artist, the lover might indeed engage
in collecting evidence and making deductions!)

\bibitem{irrational} Some make a distinction between "irrational" and
"non-rational" thought, the former consisting of belief despite evidence
acknowledged to be contradictory, the latter consisting of 
belief which takes no
consideration of evidence at all.  I see the distinction as moot-- a person who
steps into traffic {knowing} he is stepping in front of an oncoming truck,
and a person who steps into traffic {without looking at all} may both be
called "irrational."  Therefore the term "irrational" in this essay refers to
both kind of belief.

\bibitem{ryrie} Although not often called presuppositionalist or
for that matter an existentialist,
the free-will theology expounded by Ryrie (e.g. {So Great
Salvation}, Victor Books, 1990) essentially expounds the view of faith as
a choice of axioms about God, totally apart from the world of
experience and not necessarily requiring implications for the
world of experience, i.e. repentance.  Once made, the choice is
unquestioned and final, equal to the axiom of the mathematician
or the presupposition of van Til; thus a person is "once saved,
always saved."

\bibitem{bloom} A. Bloom, {The Closing of the American
Mind}, (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987).

\bibitem{sousa} D. D'Souza, {Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race
and Sex on Campus}, (The Free Press, New York, 1991) .

\bibitem{wittgen} L. Wittgenstein, {Philosophical Investigations},
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1953); {On Certainty}, (Blackwell, Oxford, 1969).

\bibitem{reich} H. Reichenbach, {The Theory of Probability; An Inquiry
into the Logical and Mathematical Foundations of the Calculus of Probability},
(University of California Press, Berkeley, 1949).

\bibitem{rational} Evidentialism also sometimes goes by the name of
rationalism, (or pejoratively as "Neo-rationalism,") but although rationalism
rules out existentialism, the term "rationalism" are very broad, applied to
those who would deduce knowledge from "self-evident" propositions, like
Descartes and Aquinas, as well as to those who argue inductively. For
Christians, the word "rationalism" often carries the connotation of reason
operating independently, without the effects of sin or a need for the Holy
Spirit; therefore "evidentialism" conveys better the idea of persuasion and
the use of evidence in the context of the work of the Holy Spirit.

\bibitem{mont} J. W. Montgomery, {The Shape of the Past},
(Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, 1962); {History and
Christianity}, (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1972); {
The Law Above the Law} (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove,
1975).

\bibitem{sch1} F. Schaeffer, {The God Who is There},
(Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1968).  There exists some
confusion about Schaeffer's position because of his use of the
term "presuppositional apologetics." For Schaeffer, this means
the calling into question of presuppositions on the basis of
logic and experience, not the irrational creation of
presuppositions.  In this book Schaeffer states that "No one
can live logically according to ... non-Christian
presuppositions."  The presuppositional{ist}, however,
maintains that the non-Christian can and does live completely
consistently within his or her logical framework.  Schaeffer
also says in this book, as I do, that "Scientific proof,
philosophical proof, and religious proof follow the same
rules." The van Tillian author R. Reymond, in {The
Justification of Knowledge}, (Presbyterian and Reformed,
Philadelphia, 1976), properly defines Schaeffer as an
evidentialist. {Presuppositional} apologetics calls into
question presuppositions on the basis of evidence and experience
(can we live with it?); Presuppositional{ism} allows no such
questioning. For the presuppositionalist this would be to allow
human reason to become a judge over God.

\bibitem{popper2} To use another example, Popper's well-known
dismissal of proof by induction ({ibid}), that seeing a great number of
white swans does not prove that no black swans exist, makes
inductive proof seem silly precisely because we all {have}
seen black swans, or at least black birds. Yet the fact that we
are surprised the first time we see a black swan shows that we
had indeed been {certain} until then that all swans are
white. In an example completely analogous to
Popper's, never seeing baby elephants materialize in the
atmosphere does not {prove} that none will ever fall from
heaven. Yet if Popper were to express any uncertainty at all
about whether this might start to occur tomorrow, we would call
for the mental hospital. The evidence against spontaneous
materialization of baby elephants is far greater than the
evidence against black birds.

\bibitem{b1} Acts 17:2,17

\bibitem{b2} Acts 17:11

\bibitem{b3} Acts 18:4, 2 Cor 5:11

\bibitem{b4} Acts 19:26, 28:24, 1 Cor 14:24, 2 Tim 3:14

\bibitem{b5} Acts 1:3

\bibitem{b6} Acts 1:8, 1 Peter 1:16-18

\bibitem{b7} John 5:31, 36, 39, 21:24, Hebrews 2:4, 1 John 1:2

\bibitem{b8} John 3:2, 20:30

\bibitem{b9} E.g. Deut 6:22, Psalms 78:43, 108:27

\bibitem{b10} Matthew 8:10, 15:28

\bibitem{b11} Matthew 6:30, 8:26, 14:31

\bibitem{b12} Luke 17:5

\bibitem{b13} 2 Thess 1:3

\bibitem{b14} 2 Peter 1:19

\bibitem{b15} Matthew 14:31, Luke 24:38, John 20:27, Jude :22

\bibitem{doubt} A recent book edited by R.C. Sproul, {Doubt and Assurance}
(Baker, Grand Rapids, 1993) deals sensitively with the issue of Christian
doubts, summarized well by Os Guinness' statement, "There is no believing
without doubting."

\bibitem{b16} 1 John 1:7-8

\bibitem{b17} Rev 17:5

\bibitem{ephesians} Ephesians 2:8

\bibitem{frame} John M. Frame, another presuppositionalist, in
{The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God}, (Presbyterian and Reformed,
Philadelphia,1987) follows Plato ({Theaetetus}) in defining an experience as
"knowledge" only when it can be placed in a "normative" framework which
makes a judgment about its "meaning." If one accepts this definition then
presuppositionalism follows almost automatically. But this narrows the
definition of "knowledge" in the extreme, since it rules out all things which
we know but make no judgment about, or which we make a wrong judgment about. It
is also subject to a criticism of circularity-- does one "know" the normative
framework first? If so, what normative framework did one know which gave a
judgment about the meaning of the other normative framework? How does one know
that prior framework? And so on. Frame acknowledges this circularity and
promotes it as a necessity.

\bibitem{august} St. Augustine of Hippo, in {On the
Predestination of the Saints}, in {Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers}, (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1974).

\bibitem{b18} Proverbs 1:7

\bibitem{edwards} J. Edwards, in {The Works of President Edwards},
(Leavitt and Allen, New York, 1857).

\bibitem{objective} A separate question is the problem of "objective"
knowledge, whether my perceptions tell me the same thing that they tell you. Do
other people really exist who perceive the same things that I do, or are they
possibly just figments of my imagination (or "Someone's" imagination)?  Since
I am attempting to construct an epistemology and not 
a metaphysic, I do not need
to answer this question. Clearly people do exist in my experience, 
whatever they
"really" may be, and whether or not I have full knowledge of what they are
(which I almost certainly do not). My knowledge and my language 
does not require
you to be real. Since language consists of a mapping of one set of my
experiences (e.g. the sound of the word "ball") onto another set of
experiences (finger pointing at a ball), I can define as truth any consistent
use of that map by whomever or whatever I communicate with. Mortimer Adler, in
his book {Ten Philosophical Mistakes}, (Macmillan, New York, 1985)
addresses the issue of "objective" knowledge, or dialogue between people of
different world views.   Of course, although I can not prove with absolute
certainty that other people exist, and I do not need to assume they are similar
to me in order to have a theory of knowledge, nevertheless the assumption of
their existence is the simplest unifying theory for explaining a vast amount of
experience.

\bibitem{gregory} B. Gregory, {Inventing Reality: Physics as Language},
(John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1988).

\bibitem{hume2}  Actually, Hume called himself a Christian-- in the sense that
Madonna calls herself a Catholic, one might say. After ridiculing the Torah on
the basis of anti-semitism as a book "presented to us by an ignorant and
barbarous people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous," ({
ibid}) he states it would take a miracle for anyone to believe it, and then
proposes exactly that kind of belief-against-all-reason as the basis for
Christianity-- the same kind of pure fideism not infrequently encountered in
churches today.

\bibitem{hvantil} H. van Till, D. Young, and C. Menninga, {
Science Held Hostage}, (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1989).

\bibitem{cults} I must include some heretical descendents of Judaism and
Christianity, such as certain schools of Islam, as 
world views that also espouse
an evidential approach to morality on the basis that "God has spoken."  In
these cases I must simply say that a direct evaluation of 
the evidence for these
claims to experience with God in history, using 
good lawcourt reasoning, reveals
severe deficiencies.  In general, however, heretical groups thrive on the
existentialist mentality that their "unprovable axioms" as just as good, but
different, from those of Christianity.

\bibitem{sch2} F. Schaeffer, {Escape from Reason},
(Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1968).

\bibitem{sch3} E.g. F. Schaeffer, {Genesis in Space and Time},
(Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1972), {Joshua and the Flow of Biblical
History}, (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1975).

\bibitem{morris} E.g. {Scientific Creationism}, H. Morris, ed.
(Master Books, El Cajun, CA, 1974); H. Morris {The God Who is Real: A
Creationist Approach to Evangelism and Missions}, (Baker, Grand Rapids, 1988).

\bibitem{mystic} Mysticism, as usually practiced, is actually an
extreme form of veneration of authority.  The words of authorities are
taken as the source of knowledge to such a degree that even
logical contradictions can not devalue their validity.  On the
contrary, even the slightest little detail of the words of the
authorities becomes venerated, such as the exact spelling of
words.  Almost all forms of Mysticism have their "holy man"
whose words, though contradictory, must be accepted because
of his authority.  Mysticism is therefore essentially an
alternate branch from the "child's epistemology" when the
child finds that the authorities contradict, and often appears in cultures
with strong scholastic traditions, such as the Roman Catholic church, the
Muslims, and the Chinese.  Rather than  judging the credibility of various
authorities, as I propose, or  rejecting all authority, as often occurs, the
child may simply  decide to cease to think logically and accept authority
blindly.

\bibitem{reason} R.C. Sproul, {Reason to Believe (Objections
Answered)}, (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1978).

\bibitem{hackett} S.C. Hackett, {The Reconstruction of the
Christian Revelation Claim}, (Baker, Grand Rapids, 1984).

\bibitem{yancey} P. Yancey, {Disappointment with God} (Zondervan, Grand
Rapids, 1988).

\bibitem{percy} Walker Percy, {The Message in the Bottle}, (FS\&G, 1975)=
.

\bibitem{b19} Romans 1:18-20

\bibitem{sproulath} R.C. Sproul, {The Psychology of Atheism (If There is
a God, Why are there Atheists?)}, (Tyndale, Wheaton, 1988).

\bibitem{sch4} As quoted by R. Reymond, {ibid}.

\end{document}

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