SYNOPSIS

There are at least six approaches people use in determining what they choose to believe:

1. The RELATIVISTIC FAITH PATH: Truth is what you make it. But relativism doesn’t work in any other area, so why trust it in the spiritual realm?

2. The TRADITIONAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve always been taught. What you were taught might be right-if your parents happened to be right. But you won’t know until you test your traditions.

3. The AUTHORITARIAN FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve been told to believe. Everyone has authorities in their lives, but before we keep submitting to them, we should examine their credentials and their message.

4. The INTUITIVE FAITH PATH: Truth is what you feel in your heart. The heart can be a source of insights, but it can also lead us down blind alleys.

5. The MYSTICAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you think God told you. God can still speak. But not everything that seems to be from God really is.

6. The EVIDENTIAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what logic and evidence point to. God gave us these two faculties for discovering what’s true. We need to help our friends employ these to discover spiritual truth, and ultimately to meet God through Jesus Christ.

It is important to understand how our friends come to their beliefs so we may better communicate the truth that God really is who He says He is and that His Word can be trusted.

EVERYONE HAS FAITH IN SOMETHING

Buddhists believe that enlightenment can be found through the eightfold path. Muslims follow the five pillars of Islam. Christians live their lives trusting that Jesus is the unique Son of God who died for their sins. We’re all convinced that what we believe is correct, and we stake our futures on it. But it’s faith just the same; none of us has absolute proof. This might surprise you, but atheists live by faith, too. They operate in the belief that there is no creator, no higher moral law, no divine judgment, and no afterlife. They can’t prove any of these things. In fact, most people in the world believe that denying them goes against the evidence as well as human experience, and therefore requires even higher levels of trust. So everybody lives by some kind of faith-that is, beliefs and actions that are based on something they consider trustworthy, even though they can’t fully prove it to be true-and usually their beliefs run pretty deep. Therefore, if we’re going to be effective in reaching them, we’ll need to do more than tell them what we believe or try to badger them into changing their minds. Rather, it’s important to first understand why our friends believe what they do-how they arrived at those beliefs. Then we’ll be in a better position to speak to them in ways they can understand, and to point them toward the many reasons they should consider putting their trust in Christ. Have you tried talking to friends about your faith, but felt like you were speaking a foreign language? Maybe you were! Perhaps the appeal you made didn’t appeal to them because they value and put their trust in different factors than you do. For example, many Christians speak out of their experience. “I asked Jesus into my life,” they say, “and He filled me with such peace and joy.” But their friend isn’t motivated by testimonies. He wants reasons to believe something is true. Or we may face the opposite situation. Perhaps we’ve read great books like Reasonable Faith, Scaling the Secular City, or The Case for Christ, and we try to convey a mountain of logic and evidence to a friend, but she’s not interested. “You can go on about all of that academic stuff, but I already know what I believe because my heart tells me what’s true.” If we don’t find out what criteria our friends are relying on and somehow address those, then we really might be, in effect, speaking a foreign language to them. The apostle Paul modeled the importance of knowing our audience so we can more effectively relate our faith to them. To Jewish people he deliberately communicated as a Jew “to win the Jews.” To “those under the law I became like one under the law…to those not having the law I became like one not having the law” and “to the weak I became weak, to win the weak.” Paul concludes by explaining, “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:20-23¹). In this article we’re going to explore six primary ways people decide what to believe-what I call the six faith paths.² These are different approaches they use to reach what they consider to be trustworthy spiritual beliefs. Once we understand these approaches and identify which of them our friends currently are on, we’ll be better prepared to point those friends toward a biblical faith. Now, I know this can sound a bit academic-and most of our friends won’t use the word-but the issue we’re dealing with here is epistemology. That’s the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge and beliefs-or, as my late friend and mentor Bob Passantino used to put it, “how you know you know.” Lots of thick, dusty textbooks have been written about this subject, and the debates go back centuries-including the classic conflicts between the continental rationalists such as René Descartes (of “I think, therefore I am” fame) and the British empiricists, especially David Hume.³ But, as we’ll see, these issues are relevant for today and important to consider as we seek to be effective witnesses for Christ.

THE SIX FAITH PATHS

1. The RELATIVISTIC FAITH PATH: Truth is what you make it.The first of the six approaches people take to choosing their faith is the relativistic faith path. People in this view choose what to believe by deciding what they want to believe-and then thinking that somehow mystically, magically, reality conforms to those beliefs. It’s like they’ve got a private timeshare on truth. That’s why people who take this approach often say things like, “I’ve got my truth; you’ve got yours-let’s just get along.” I’m all for getting along-as Christians we need to be strong advocates of tolerance, in that we support people’s right to choose their own beliefs. But that doesn’t mean everybody is right. Tolerance and truth are two entirely different issues. I’ll support the rights of groups to say, for example, that Jesus was actually an exalted mushroom (people really do teach that)-but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. An important aspect of tolerance is the freedom to disagree and debate about spiritual ideas-and not pretend that everyone’s beliefs are equally valid. How can we reach out to our relativistic friends? Don’t just start throwing evidence for Christianity at them-they’ll just dismiss it as “your truth.” Instead, address their whole approach to truth. How? One way is by showing them that relativism doesn’t work in any other area of life-so why trust it in the spiritual realm? You could suggest, for example, that they go to Hollywood to try driving on Highway 101-as a relativist. Specifically, they should decide that the sign by the road that says “101″ is, for them, the speed limit. Then if they happen to meet a California highway patrolman they can simply explain, “My truth is that my speed limit is 101, so you should just let me be.” How do you think that will work out for them? Probably not so well. With incredulity the officer will reply, “Look, you can play word games with your friends, but when you’re out here on the highway there’s no ‘your truth/my truth’-just real truth. And the real truth is that the speed limit is 65, and you’re going to pay a hefty fine!” Or maybe your friends are in college-perhaps taking classes from relativistic professors. So next time they take a final exam encourage them to put down their own answers-their truth-instead of the answers their professors taught them, and see what happens. Needless to say, relativistic test taking won’t work out much better than relativistic highway driving-or relativistic dieting, relativistic dating, or relativistic anything. The truth is that in real life we need to discover and deal with…the real truth! It’s not what we want things to be or think they ought to be. Truth is what really is. Therefore our job-if we’re interested in survival-is to discover what really is, and adjust our lives accordingly. Imagining or wishing things were different has no effect on how things really are. That’s true in the physical world, but also in the spiritual world. If atheists are really right and there is no God, then our studying about God, praying to God, and worshiping God will not cause Him to suddenly appear-poof! On the other hand, if we’re right and there really is a God, then the denials and denunciations of the atheists are not going to get rid of Him. The real question is this: What reasons are there to believe or not believe in God? Relativism can’t answer that question; it can only lead one to choose a belief and to act as if it were really true. That’s a roll of dice I don’t want to take with my life-and one we should try to convince our friends that they don’t want to take with their lives, either. Instead, we need to urge them to find a more reliable faith path, one that will lead them to a trustworthy faith based on real facts. I’d especially recommend the sixth path, which we’ll discuss below.

2. The TRADITIONAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve always been taught.The second approach is the traditional faith path. This accepts beliefs as hand-me-downs. Your friend on this path might not ever even think about what he believes or why-he simply accepts what his parents and others taught as he was growing up. This person says, “My grandparents were Hindus, my parents were Hindus, and I’m a Hindu-and always will be one.” So what can we say to someone with this mindset? We can ask how they know their grandparents and parents were right, because they could have been wrong-mine could have been; yours could have been. Clearly someone’s parents were wrong-since they don’t all agree with each other. So how do we find out whose parents, and whose belief systems, are correct? Not by blindly clinging to traditions. You might encourage your friends to think of the last holiday they had with their wider family. Urge them to consider the people around the dinner table, especially the older ones, and to ask themselves: “Which of these relatives do I respect enough to entrust my eternity to?”-because that’s what they’re doing when they unthinkingly perpetuate hand-me-down beliefs and traditions. I love my relatives and enjoy being around them, but there is not a single one of them I’m going to let do my thinking for me, or decide on my behalf and on behalf of my children what we’re going to believe throughout future generations. Instead of supporting a blind journey down the traditional faith path, the Bible tells us to “test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil” (1 Thess. 5:21-22). And Jesus cautioned His listeners about the dangers of letting tradition stand in the way of obeying what God has said (Mark 7:5-13). The traditional path is a natural way to begin as children. But at some point we need to grow up spiritually and think for ourselves, examine the reasons behind the traditions we’ve been taught, and seek truth with God’s help until we’re confident we are on the right path. Jesus promised that if people will ask, seek, and knock then they will find not just truth, but the God of truth Himself (Luke 11:9-13). If you’re a Christian who has been relying on your upbringing to carry you through life, let me urge you to reinforce your faith with sound reasons and evidence. Paul warned that we must “no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching” (Eph. 4:14). You’ll never be mature or confident in your faith until you’ve studied it for yourself and know why you believe. Only then will you also be able, with conviction, “to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Pet. 3:15).

3. The AUTHORITARIAN FAITH PATH: Truth is what you’ve been told to believe.Similar to the last approach, the authoritarian faith path is also passive, but this one can come with much more force. It says: You WILL believe this! I saw this one day when I took a church group on a trip to a mosque. The imam, or teacher, had us all sit down so he could give us an overview of the tenets of Islam-and while he was at it he decided to teach us a few things about Christianity as well. He adamantly declared that “God is not divided; he does not have a son.” I knew Muslims also deny that Jesus died on the cross, and therefore reject claims about His resurrection, too. So I raised my hand and said, “I’m curious about something. Jesus’ followers walked and talked with Him for several years. They also reported that He repeatedly claimed to be the Son of God, that they watched Him die on the cross, and that three days later they saw and talked and ate with Him after He was resurrected. They wrote down detailed accounts of what they heard and saw. These have been preserved in thousands of manuscript documents. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but what Islam teaches us about Jesus seems to be based on the words of one man, Muhammad, who, six hundred years after the time of Christ, was sitting in a cave when, he claimed, an angel spoke to him and told him these things weren’t so. What I’m curious about is whether you have any historical or logical reasons for why we should accept that viewpoint over and against the actual historical record?” The imam glared at me and then declared, “I choose to believe the prophet!”-and the discussion was over. For him, the authority of his religion was all he needed. If he had deeper reasons backing up his faith, he chose not to share them. It’s interesting that the original meaning of the Arabic word “Islam” is “submission,” and it seems fair to say that many Muslims accept their faith primarily through the influence and authority of their parents, teachers, government, or society. They are boldly told that Allah is the true God, the Qur’an is his revelation, Muhammad is his messenger, and that they need to submit to these claims. This strong appeal to authority can be seen in a number of other religions and religious groups as well. What can we say to people who are on this faith path? First, we need to make it clear that we’re not antiauthority-we all will be influenced and led by authorities in our lives. But we need to emphasize the importance of making sure we submit to the right authorities. How? Here are two areas to check out: the credentials of the authority and the credibility of their message. First, the credentials. When my children get sick, I naturally want to take them to a doctor. But what kind of doctor should we go see? We could go to a medical doctor, or we can visit a witch doctor-both have “doctor” in their titles. Call me narrow-minded, but I have a strong preference for the one who has the certificates on the wall. I want to know that my kids’ doctor went to a great school that taught the best of medical practices, and that he or she showed up for class, got good grades, and graduated with the right degree. Similarly, if I’m going to follow a religious authority, I want it to be one who passes all the tests of character, moral integrity, truth-telling, accurate teaching, and consistency. Jesus has all of these, plus the fulfillment of ancient prophecies, miracles done in the presence of eyewitnesses, and He rose from the dead. All of this gives me confidence that He is the one with the real credentials, and therefore worth following wholeheartedly. And the credibility of the message? It needs to be based on facts, not fables. It needs to square with the real world, and not some make-believe place. (For example, when Jesus warns in John 16:33 that “in this world you will have trouble,” it’s a message that rings true, over and above the feel-good philosophers who say everything is beautiful, and evil is illusory.) It must also square with what we know to be true from God’s Word-so when Muhammad and his followers tell you that Jesus was a prophet but not the Son of God, we know from Scripture that this message fails the test. If anything is clear in the historical record of the New Testament, it’s that Jesus was the Son of God-and He demonstrated this through his life, teachings, insights, and miraculous powers.

4. The INTUITIVE FAITH PATH: Truth is what you feel in your heart.The fourth approach is the intuitive faith path, exhibited in the person who says, “Why do I need evidence when I have Oprah? She and her spiritual teachers say we should look within ourselves and listen to our spirit. So that’s how I figure out what to believe.” This one reminds me of the classic scene in Star Wars where Obi-Wan Kenobi is training his young apprentice, Luke Skywalker, how to use his light saber. Obi-Wan instructs Luke to stop using his senses. “Don’t trust your eyes. Your eyes will deceive you,” he said. Instead, he puts a hood over Luke’s face so he can’t see anything. Then he says, “Just feel the Force.” This all sounds so spiritual. But when you talk to your friends who think this way ask them if they’ve ever tried following their heart or trusting their feelings to guide them in making investments. They’d be broke in almost no time flat. Or ask them if they’ve attempted to drive to some side-street address in the heart of a major city based on instinct alone, without a road map. Sure, they might have gotten lucky and found their way on occasion, but usually they’ll become frustrated and begin to realize that their senses-and road maps-were created for a reason. God can and sometimes does give us an intuitive sense about things. We should pay attention to what our heart seems to be telling us or, as the saying goes, do occasional gut checks. But we, and our friends, need to be careful. The heart, according to the Bible, is deceitfully wicked and it can quickly lead us astray. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, warned us in Proverbs 14:12 (NLT), “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” Intuition is like a flashing yellow light in a dark intersection-it signals to pay attention, but it doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. You still need to look both ways, figure out what the real situation is, and act accordingly. Spiritual intuition is similar to that. It might give some clues, but you still need to search for solid truth and reliable evidence in order to be confident you’re really on the right track.

5. The MYSTICAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what you think God told you.Friends who take this fifth approach, the mystical faith path, choose what they believe based on experiences they consider to be transcendent. They are therefore supremely confident in what they believe. “Why should I pay attention to you and your academic arguments,” they wonder, “when I already know what God has shown me?” I most commonly see this approach in Mormon people who testify that they know their beliefs are correct because they once prayed and asked God if the Book of Mormon was true-and they’re convinced He showed them that it is. So for them, it’s “case closed”-and they can’t understand why you’re so hesitant to become a Mormon as well. There’s an old saying, “It’s hard to argue with experience.” While that’s true, it’s also dangerous to form beliefs on experience alone. So what should we say to our friends who are on the mystical faith path? First, we shouldn’t deny that God can speak today. He didn’t lose His voice two thousand years ago! Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” So we should be open to God speaking, including in extraordinary ways, as we see Him doing occasionally in the pages of the Bible. But we must also be careful. The Bible warns in 1 John 4:1, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” And 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 cautions, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.” So the message of Scripture is, first, be open to hearing God’s voice, but, second, be careful about what you accept as being from God. How can we test such things? By applying the pattern in the Bible, which is to test alleged new revelations against what we already know to be from God. For example, Paul warned in Galatians 1:8, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” In other words, don’t automatically put stock in a message you receive through a mystical experience unless it passes the test and brings a message consistent with what you already know to be true from God’s previous revelations in the Bible. Mormonism? Its message that there are many gods contradicts the clear monotheistic teachings of both the Old and New Testaments. So if your Mormon friends say God told them it’s true, show them that according to the Bible they need to “test all things,” and not to believe every spirit-even if it’s an angel standing right in front of them-if it contradicts what God has already revealed.

6. The EVIDENTIAL FAITH PATH: Truth is what logic and evidence point to.The sixth approach, the evidential faith path, relies primarily on logic and evidence to show what should be believed. Even though logic and evidence can be ignored or misused, I believe these are two inescapable, God-given tools for determining what is true and trustworthy in the world around us. First, logic. We can’t think, evaluate ideas, or make decisions without it. Yes, some will claim that they don’t trust logic-but they use logic to try to make their point. When people tell you they don’t trust reason just ask them why-and they’ll start giving you reasons against reason. Or sometimes they’ll say that our use of logic is “Western,” and therefore not accepted by the other half of the world that lives in the East. But as Indian-born apologist Ravi Zacharias says, “Even in India if you step out in front of a bus it will kill you!” And need we argue for the importance of evidence, experienced through the five senses? All scientific research relies on it; it’s the foundational tool of our justice system; it’s what we use every day to figure out what is true. Logic and evidence are inescapable-so we might as well employ them with excellence. More than that, the Bible-which is itself supported by reason and evidence-tells us to test truth claims using these tools, as I’ve been illustrating throughout this article. Jesus often pointed to the evidence to verify His claims, including fulfilled prophecies, miracles, His consistent character and sinless life, His role as the Messiah and His nature as the unique Son of God, and ultimately the supernatural exclamation point of His resurrection from the dead. He also warned us to examine the words and work of others who claim to be prophets, to see whether the evidence substantiates their claims. Now, I’m not saying we can rely on our own intellects alone, or that humans have the capacity to figure out their way to God by themselves. God had to reveal Himself, and His Holy Spirit has to draw us to Him. Ultimately our faith and confidence needs to be in God and His wisdom-but logic and evidence help us and our friends in knowing which God to put our faith in and which book we can be confident is God’s revelation. Looking back over the other faith paths, it’s also this mix of logic and evidence that helps us to evaluate the relativistic faith path, determining it is faulty because truth needs to square with what is real. It provides the tools to test our traditions to determine which ones are worth holding onto, and to assess the credentials and messages of the authorities in our lives. It also helps us to size up our intuitive instincts, and to confirm or disconfirm our mystical encounters. More than that, it helps us to assemble an ensemble of reasons for accepting the Christian faith, as I and many other apologists have done in our books and articles.⁴ Studying these arguments will strengthen your own faith, and it will give you the confidence and compelling information you need to effectively communicate that faith to others-as we “become all things to all men…for the sake of the gospel.”

Mark Mittelberg is an international speaker and bestselling author of Choosing Your Faith … In a World of Spiritual Options (Tyndale); Faith Path: Helping Friends Find Their Way to Christ (David C. Cook), and coauthor with Lee Strobel of The Unexpected Adventure (Zondervan) and with Bill Hybels of Becoming a Contagious Christian (Zondervan).

NOTES

1. All Bible quotations are from the New International Version, except where otherwise noted.
2. I present these in detail in Mark Mittelberg with Foreword by Lee Strobel, Choosing Your Faith: In a World of Spiritual Options (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Publishing House, 2008), and in the complementary eight-week training course Mark Mittelberg, Faith Path: Helping Friends Find Their Way to Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2009).
3. For discussion of these topics and the philosophers who represented the various schools of thought, see Frederick Copleston, S. J., A History of Philosophy, especially volumes 4 and 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1994 [original copyrights: 1959-1960]).
4. See, for example, my sections on the twenty “Arrows of Truth” in chapters 9-11 of Choosing Your Faith, and in sessions 6-7 of the Faith Path study course. Also, every Christian should read classics such as Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ (Zondervan, 1998), William Lane Craig’s updated Reasonable Faith (Crossway, 2008), and J. P. Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City (Baker, 1987).

Synopsis

Radical skepticism about the external world is the idea that we cannot have accurate knowledge about the physical world outside of our minds. That idea, if true, would block the truth-seeker’s attempt to gain knowledge of God based on God’s revelation in the physical world. We can, however, examine four types of radical skepticism concerning the external world—funky/pop skepticism, sensory skepticism, Kantian skepticism, and linguistic skepticism— and show that they fail.

According to funky/pop skepticism, our knowledge of the external world is blocked because various logical possibilities can be raised—that we are in a dream or are living in a computer-generated virtual reality, for example. This type of skepticism confuses possibility with plausibility.

According to sensory skepticism, we do not know the external world because we cannot trust our senses, since they have deceived us in the past. This skepticism fails, however, because from the fact that our senses sometimes deceive us, it does not follow that they always do.

According to Kantian skepticism, we do not know the world because the mind’s structures are a distorting influence on our knowledge of what is real. This view, however, seems to require at least some accurate, i.e., undistorted, knowledge of the reality and influence of the mind’s structures. But this requirement contradicts the core of Kantian skepticism (that the mind’s structures are a distorting influence on our knowledge of what is real), rendering its broader skeptical claims dubious.

According to linguistic skepticism, we do not know the world because language refers only to other language, it is a “prison” that keeps us from the world. This view of language, however, is false, because the existence of ostensive definition (definition by pointing) makes it possible for people to get out of the dictionary and to the world.

Other reasons also render the radical skepticisms seriously problematic. One significant reason is that the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of those who would deny the obvious; when radical skeptics fail to provide such proof, the obvious—the idea that we can know the external world—remains.

Radical skepticism concerning the external world is the philosophical view that we cannot have accurate knowledge about the physical reality that exists outside our minds. Sadly, if a person believes that the external world cannot be known, then it will be difficult for that person to know that (as Psalm 19:1–2 and Romans 1:20 state) the physical world—its glorious heavens included—declares the existence of its Creator. l Following the apostle Paul’s mandate to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5), in this article I will look at four types of radical skepticism—funky/pop, sensory, Kantian, and linguistic—and will show that they fail. Those who deny the obvious, as do radical skeptics, must shoulder the burden of proof;the radical skeptics’ failure to disprove the obvious means that the obvious remains: we can know the external world.

FUNKY/POP SKEPTICISM: BLINDED BY LOGICAL POSSIBILITY

Funky/pop skepticism is my label for a radical skepticism about the external world that probably is best explained by considering some examples. (The examples are a bit weird, hence funky. The notion is common due to the influence of media on contemporary popular culture, hence pop.)

Consider the film The Matrix. Suppose we are characters in this story: what we perceive to be real is merely a computer-generated illusion, but in actuality, each of us is floating in an amniotic-sac-like pod with our nervous systems and brains wired into a common virtual reality. Whatever we sense—that is, whatever we think we sense—is merely what a supercomputer programs for us to sense. Nothing we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch is real.

Prior to The Matrix series of films, philosophers entertained a similar possibility. Some suggested that we are merely brains in vats, kept alive by a mad scientist who feeds us patterns of electrical impulses that mimic our sensory organs.

Consider also the possibility that you are at this very moment dreaming. (This example originates with René Descartes [1596–1650].)¹ Whatever you see, hear, smell, taste, touch—and read—is simply part of your dream.

How do you know that, right now, you are not in something like The Matrix? Or that you are not a brain in a vat? Or that you are not dreaming? I might answer that I believe I am not in The Matrix because I have not yet met agent Smith. (Smith, according to the film series, is a representative of the supercomputer.) The skeptic would respond that the supercomputer wants to keep me in the dark. I might argue that I am not a brain in a vat because I can feel my skull with my hands. The skeptic answers that the mad scientist has wired me to perceive that I am touching my skull when in fact I’m not really touching anything. Let’s say that I argue that I’m pretty sure that I’m not dreaming because I heard my alarm go off this morning. The skeptic answers that it’s not at all unusual for one to hear one’s alarm go off in one’s dream. Alarmingly (sorry), any evidence that I present against the skeptic can be subsumed under the Matrix hypothesis, the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, or the dream hypothesis. Should I thus give up my knowledge of the external world?

A Rational Reply to Funky/Pop Skepticism

There is a reasonable way to answer the funky/pop skeptic. In fact, there are five ways, which together constitute a formidable cumulative case argument.²

First, following the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), we can point out that to imagine a doubt is not really to have that doubt.³ We can imagine, say, that the Statue of Liberty is a robot—but that’s not really to believe it actually might be a robot. That is, we can imagine the doubt that the statue isn’t really a statue, but that’s not actually to doubt it’s a statue. So, yes, I can imagine that I am in a computer-generated world, but that doesn’t mean I truly believe I might in fact be in such a world. Simply put: imagining isn’t doubting. To think otherwise is to conflate two distinct cognitive categories.

Second, we can point out that if one were to be convinced of any of the above skeptical hypotheses, then one would be confusing logical possibility with plausibility/probability. Yes, it is logically possible that the moon is made of green cheese (i.e., there is no logical contradiction in this claim), but from this it does not follow logically that the moon actually is made of green cheese. In other words, the mere logical possibility of X is not the same as an adequate justification for X; therefore, the mere possibility of doubt does not constitute sufficient grounds for doubt.

Third, we can point out that there is no compelling reason to accept any of the funky/pop hypotheses. After all, all we have is the skeptic’s mere assertion (of a mere logical possibility).

Fourth, we can point out that belief in any of the funky/pop hypotheses requires a denial of many of our prior beliefs that are logically incompatible with those hypotheses. Furthermore, these prior beliefs are not without epistemic weight—that is, they also count as contenders for knowledge.

Fifth, we can point out that if, for the sake of argument, we accept mere assertions of bare logical possibilities as sufficient grounds for the truth of those assertions, then, to be consistent, we should believe all mere assertions of logical possibilities as truths. This, however, would mean that all logical possibilities are true, which is plainly absurd. We would have to believe that The Matrix is true, and that the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis is true, and that the dream hypothesis is true, and that The Lord of the Rings is true, and that Batman is true, and that the moon is made of cheese, and that the moon isn’t made of cheese, and…you get the picture.

In other words, rational persons can weigh the pros and cons—in this case, one pro that consists of a mere assertion of funky/pop skepticism versus five cons or counter-considerations—to conclude that it is reasonable not to believe funky/pop skepticism.⁴

SENSORY SKEPTICISM: BLINDED BY OUR SENSES

Sensory skepticism tells us that we cannot know the external world because our senses deceive us. (This skepticism, like the previously mentioned dream hypothesis, also is inspired by Descartes.) Consider the following examples. When rowing my boat, I put an oar into the water, but then the oar appears bent. When walking in the countryside, I see a flat wall on a distant farm building, but as I get closer the wall turns out to be curved. When strolling along the railroad tracks, I see that the metal rails look straight and parallel, but on the horizon they appear to meet. When driving my car on a hot summer day, I see water on the road ahead, but as I continue to drive I observe that the road is dry. While volunteering as a subject for psychology research, I see a red six of hearts as the researcher flashes a playing card, but later discover that it was a red six of spades.⁵ Clearly, my senses do deceive me. They therefore should not be trusted.

A Rational Reply to Sensory Skepticism

There are three reasonable criticisms that we can set out against radical sensory skepticism. I describe each of them as follows.

First, always does not follow logically from sometimes. The fact that we are sometimes deceived by our senses does not mean that we are always deceived by them.

Second, to know that our senses sometimes deceive us requires that they sometimes or often do not. Indeed, for us to discern that I mistakenly think that the oar is bent, that the wall is flat, that the tracks do not remain parallel, that the road is wet, or that the card is a red six of hearts requires that we have clear and accurate sensory knowledge. It presupposes that we know—accurately—that the oar is in fact straight, that the wall is in fact curved, that the tracks are in fact parallel, that the road is in fact dry, and that the card is in fact a red six of spades. The argument of the sensory skeptic, then, requires as legitimate and true what it purports to show is not legitimate and true. It self-refutes.

Third, because the argument for sensory skepticism very apparently fails, our senses’ prima facie veridicality—that is, their very apparent truthfulness—remains. As mentioned, the burden of proof belongs to those who deny the obvious, so the senses are innocent until proven guilty. It is reasonable, then, to go with what our senses tell us about the world, as long as we have no overriding reason to doubt them, and as long as we’re careful.

KANTIAN SKEPTICISM: BLINDED BY OUR MENTAL STRUCTURES

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) set out a theory of knowledge that inspired yet another form of radical skepticism.6 According to Kant, all our knowledge begins with sensory experience, but the human mind—via its conditioners of sense-experience and its categories of thought—makes a significant contribution to this knowledge. These conditioners and categories determine what we can experience, and even shape our experience. Using Kant’s terminology, all we can perceive is phenomena (what our mind has conditioned and categorized), not noumena (the things themselves).

In effect, our mental conditioners and categories are like rose-tinted glasses that project pink onto all we see. Our mental conditioners project space and time, and our mental categories project category-specific thought onto all we experience.

Via our mind’s category of, say, causality, we project causation onto events we experience. We project cause onto, say, a pool cue hitting a pool ball, and thereby we “know” that the cue “causes” the ball’s movement. Via the mind’s category of substance, we project the notion of material stuff onto what appears to be, say, a brick. We do the same with various other mental categories, such as existence. (According to Kant, there are twelve such categories.)

Our mental conditioners and categories are even more like a meat-grinder/sausage-making machine than tinted glasses. What we can perceive and know—the phenomena, which have been shaped by the conditioners and categories—would be the sausages. What is real—the noumena, besides the meat that is shaped into sausages (which we only know as sausages)—would be the stuff that does not fit into the grinder (e.g., the knives, the butcher, bicycles, and suspension bridges). No matter how much we grind, we won’t really know the external world.

A Rational Reply to Kantian Skepticism

We need not accept Kantian skepticism, for four reasons.

First, if Kantian skepticism is true, then science’s search for causal connections/laws ultimately is a search for connections/laws that are not really in the world, but in our heads. That this is a search for what is not really in the world is plainly false; therefore, Kantian skepticism is false.

Second, as philosopher Jim Leffel astutely observes, “The success of scientific technology is a strong argument that our perceptions of the world are relatively accurate. Countless achievements attest to the reliability of human knowledge. We can engineer enormously sophisticated rockets to propel men to the moon, and provide health care that has more than doubled human life expectancy. We couldn’t do these things without an essentially reliable correspondence between our ideas of reality and reality itself.”⁷

Third, for Kantian skeptics to perceive that the mind cannot perceive things as they are requires that the mind can. The Kantian skeptical position assumes that the skeptic can stand outside the meat-grinder/sausage-making machine and see the meat, the grinder, the table, and so on. If the skeptic is correct that the mind cannot see things as they are, however, then he or she should only see sausages, and nothing else. If the skeptic can have this “outside” view, then, surely, so can everyone.

The previous point can be argued more carefully as follows. The Kant-inspired skeptic holds to the thesis that humans misperceive the world through their colored and distorted concepts of it (hereafter, this thesis will be referred to as the Kantian thesis). In other words, the Kantian thesis has to do with a particular aspect of the world, that is, that humans in fact misperceive the world via their concepts. To gain traction, Kantian skepticism must involve an admission that we can know, via our concepts, that the Kantian thesis is true. This, however, means that the skeptic must presuppose an alternative non-Kantian thesis, a thesis that holds that humans, via their concepts, actually do know the world in a noncolored, nondistorting way. Now, because this alternative thesis is not self-contradictory (and thus not knocked out of the explanatory competition right at the start); because the Kantian thesis requires that the alternative thesis is true (albeit with respect to a limited domain); and because there seems to be no overriding reason to limit the domain of the alternative thesis in the way the Kantian thesis does, we can conclude that the doubt the Kantian thesis casts on observation is seriously weakened. This means that it is quite reasonable to accept as accurate the evidence that our observations of the everyday/scientific sort very apparently and very often are accurate.⁸

Fourth, Kant’s theory of knowledge faces other deep problems. The categories of understanding are supposed to apply to phenomena, not noumena. The category of causation, however, is applied to noumena (as the cause of the phenomena). The category of existence is applied to noumena too (noumena is said to exist), and so on. In other words, Kant’s view is contradictory in some of its crucial tenets; thus, it is reasonable not to succumb to Kantian skepticism.

LINGUISTIC SKEPTICISM: BLINDED BY LANGUAGE

According to linguistic skepticism (which lurks behind some postmodernist philosophizing), we cannot know truth about the world in an objective way because of the distorting effect of language. On this view, we think only in language, and language refers only to other language, so language is a “prison” (of signifiers) that keeps us from knowing anything outside language. There is no reference to an extra-linguistic world, and words continually refer to each other; because of this there is a never-ending deferral of meaning. Also, the semantics (word meanings) and syntax (grammatical structure) of languages are not fixed; they are, rather, social constructions (cultural creations), so the way people understand reality is dependent on culture, which varies. Consequently:

• There is no objective truth; each community has its own mere “story” or ”narrative.”
• There is no objective rationality; we reason in language, which is culture-dependent.
• There are no objective ethics; values are relative to culture, too.
• Therefore, power rules; the dominating cultural group ultimately controls the language (wittingly or unwittingly), so it determines “truth,” rationality, and ethics.

We thus should be radically suspicious of alleged knowledge of the external world.

A Rational Reply to Linguistic Skepticism

We should not be persuaded by linguistic skepticism. The following reasons demonstrate that language does not always shield us from truth, as linguistic skepticism suggests.

First, and most important, the linguistic skeptic’s view of language is false. To be sure, language often refers to other language (check any dictionary). It is simply not the case, however, that language is completely defined by other language. There is such a thing as ostensive definition—that is, the fact that we define our words by physically pointing at the extralinguistic thing(s) to which we intend our words to refer.⁹ Language, then, is not a “prison” that keeps us from reality; there is no endless deferral of meaning. We do use words to communicate information about the extralinguistic world, and we—linguistic skeptics included—do this quite well. Linguistic skeptics refer us to their writings, but those writings are extralinguistic markings (called print) found on extralinguistic objects (called pages), found in other extralinguistic objects (called books), located on yet other extralinguistic objects (called shelves), and so on. Linguistic skeptics even be­come upset if we misrepresent their written work.

Second, although the semantics and syntax of languages are not absolutely fixed (they are contingent social constructions), it does not follow that our understanding of reality depends wholly on language and so is wholly socially constructed. Yes, labels and how they are used are in fact dependent on the language system in use and are in a sense arbitrary. The word “dog” is actually an arbitrary collection of letters (in France, people use “chien,” in the Netherlands, “hond”). The semantics and grammar we use with the word are conventional (culturally dependent, not absolutely fixed). Such labels, nonetheless, can refer successfully to extralinguistic entities. Think of the dog down the street. The dog itself clearly is not a mere social construction, as the torn pant leg will attest. In other words, relativity of term selection and use does not mean that language cannot refer to external reality, nor that external reality has no say (or bite).

Third, we legitimately can ask, is there really no objective truth? To answer this question, it may be helpful to look to Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who, famously, wrote the following:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical and binding. Truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

If truth is mere metaphor or illusion, then Nietzsche’s claim, which purports to be true, is mere metaphor or illusion. If truth is not mere metaphor or illusion, then Nietzsche’s claim is false. Either way, why bother with Nietzsche’s claim?¹⁰

The fact is that there is something called simple truth. Simple truth is the (correspondence) notion of truth of which we are all aware and which we all use in science and in everyday life. For example, it is true that water freezes at 32° Fahrenheit, it is true that my desk is made primarily of wood, and so forth.

Fourth, the claim that standards of rationality are wholly relative to the community or tribe is false. The principle of noncontradiction, for example, is a fundamental principle of logic that is applicable to all. The principle of noncontradiction states that something cannot both be and not be, at the same time and in the same respect. (We can see this as necessarily true: can anyone be taller and not taller than a particular neighbor of his or hers, at the same time and in the same respect? Moreover, argument forms exist that are deductively valid,¹¹ and thus applicable to all as well.¹²

Fifth, that moral relativism is true can be seriously challenged. Poking pins into a baby’s eyes for fun surely is wrong for everyone, everywhere, always.¹³

Sixth, the fact that language and power are often intertwined is grounds for caution, not radical skepticism. People who have power (e.g., politicians) might use words that carry persuasive emotional appeals rather than truth (e.g., “only rednecks vote for [the politician you like the least]”). The claim, however, that language is wholly a power play and thus not capable of communicating knowledge is false. The truth or falsity of sentences depends on the facts of the world, not on power agendas. That’s why we are able to check up on power-mongering politicians to hold them accountable. Moreover, if (contrary to fact) language were wholly a power play, then we would have no good grounds to believe the linguistic skeptic’s arguments, because he or she merely would be using language to exert power over us.

In sum, we should be careful with language, because sometimes our language is unclear, ambiguous, emotionally loaded, or false, for example. Language, nevertheless, need not and does not always blind us to truth about the extratextual world; thus, linguistic skepticism fails.¹⁴

REASONABLE SKEPTICISM, RADICAL SKEPTICISM, AND REASONABLE FAITH

We have examined funky/pop skepticism’s alleged blinding by its assertion of mere logical possibilities, sensory skepticism’s alleged blinding due to our senses getting it wrong from time to time, Kantian skepticism’s alleged blinding by the influences of the mind’s structures/filters, and linguistic skepticism’s alleged blinding by language—and we have found some good reasons to be skeptical about each of these radical skepticisms. Of course, we often make mistakes—but sometimes we don’t. Of course, we don’t know the external world exhaustively or absolutely—but sometimes we do know some of it reasonably and fallibly. Of course, we don’t have X-ray vision—but we are not blind either.

This is good news. It turns out that because we can know at least some of the external world (in a limited way), we can find reasonable evidence for the existence of God. Scientifically based evidence and good reasoning lead us to believe that the universe had a beginning; that it was caused; that that cause transcends matter, energy, space, and time; that the arrangement of the universe was fine-tuned for life; and that life itself—the cell’s molecular machines and DNA’s code/language—is exquisitely fine-tuned. All of this points to an intelligent and powerful supernatural cause. Historical investigation of the external world gives us further reason to believe the New Testament’s witness concerning Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. In other words, the external world points us to the Christian worldview, the gospel, and a reasonable faith in Jesus Christ.¹⁵

Hendrik van der Breggen, Ph.D. (University of Waterloo), is assistant professor of philosophy at Providence College and Seminary, Otterburne, Manitoba.

notes

1 René Descartes, “Meditation One,” in Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986), 58.

2 A cumulative case argument consists of a collection of arguments that, individually, may not provide strong or decisive support for a conclusion, but jointly do—just as one strand of string may not be strong enough to lift a heavy load but several interwoven strands are.

3 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), no. 84, p. 39e.

4 The idea of weighing the above considerations (especially the third and fourth) against the skeptical position comes from Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies (Foster City, CA: IDG Books, 1999), 72–74.

5 See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 62–64, 112–13. The card example (as well as the other examples) can also fit under Kant-inspired skepticism, i.e., skepticism arising from conceptual categories, schemes, or even paradigms, as well as under linguistic or postmodern skepticism, to be discussed.

6 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp-Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929; reprint 1986).

7 Jim Leffel, “Postmodernism and ‘The Myth of Progress’: Two Visions,” in The Death of Truth, ed. Dennis McCallum (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1996), 52.

8 My argument is heavily influenced by Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 92–96. “The second-order theories [e.g., Kant’s theory, i.e., the view that our concepts/perceptions do not get us to the external mind-independent world] cannot avoid competition with the content of what they are trying to reduce or debunk [i.e., that our concepts really do get us to the external mind-independent world]” (Nagel, 96).

9 Wesley C. Salmon, Logic, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984), 145. This point is from Douglas Groothuis’s excellent book Truth Decay: Defending Christianity against the Challenges of Postmodernism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 95.Friedrich Nietzsche, “Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” in The Nietzsche Reader, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson and Duncan Large (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 117.

10 If, contrary to what his words seem to mean, Nietzsche is talking only about some or many (but not all) alleged “truths” not being genuinely true, then we should have no quarrel with him. Such a scenario would warrant a careful case-by-case investigation, however difficult, but not radical skepticism. If in his rejection of truth, however, Nietzsche means that truth is nothing but interpretation that precludes accurate knowledge of the external world, then Nietzsche seems unduly influenced by Kantian skepticism and unaware of the significance of ostensive definition apart from Kant’s influence, which provides us with what philosophers call knowledge by acquaintance. For more on knowledge by acquaintance, see J. P. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 120–130. For a helpful and generally sympathetic look at Nietzsche, see Robert Wicks, Nietzsche (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002).

For more on the concept of simple truth, see: Michael Luntley, Reason, Truth, and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 103–23; and J. P. Moreland, “Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn,” in Andreas Köstenberger, ed., Whatever Happened to Truth? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 75–92.

11 Deductive validity means that whenever an argument’s premises are true, then the argument’s conclusion is true too; that is, it’s not possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

12 The valid argument form modus ponens is stated thus (where P and Q respresent declarative sentences): If P then Q; P; therefore Q. Consider this form as exemplified by the following argument: If Fido is a dog, then Fido is mortal; Fido is a dog; therefore Fido is mortal. The argument is deductively valid everywhere and always. See also Salmon, Logic, chap. 2 , and Trudy Govier, A Practical Study of Argument, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005), chaps. 7–8.

13 For further explanation see Paul Chamberlain, Can We Be Good Without God? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996); Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

14 It seems to me that the text has priority in interpretation: we seek out the context (historical and linguistic) to which the text directs us, then we seek out specific meaning in that context, to which the text also directs us. In other words, the text directs through its context to the meaning that the text was intended to point to by its author, and this meaning is picked up by the reader. For more, see the appendices of Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006).

15 On the external world’s evidence for the Christian worldview, see Chad V. Meister, Building Belief: Constructing Faith from the Ground Up (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006); and William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008).

This is not the result of clever marketing or because Craig set out to create his own trademark, yet from the seminary classroom to national apologetics conferences, Craig has helped make winsome the art of offering reasons and evidences for Christian knowledge claims.

For good reason, William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics has become not only his “signature” title, but has helped resource and lead a whole generation of scholars, apologists, and pastors to think Christ ianly about their worldview. In 2009, the book will enjoy twenty-five years’ worth of readers.

Originally published in 1984 (Moody Press), then revised in 1994 (Crossway Books), and recently released as a third edition in 2008 (Crossway Books), the journey of Reasonable Faith evidences responsiveness to current objections against Christianity without itself being a trendy response. It also evidences cut-ting-edge research intended to directly substantiate a positive case for Christian claims.

There are good reasons and evidences for receiving Reasonable Faith as Craig’s signature title. First, since its inception, the book has fostered fertile ground for Craig and others. It’s not surprising that from within its lush soil, a reader can detect seeds of Craig’s other contributions, whether on the resurrection of Jesus (e.g., Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus), arguments for the existence of God (e.g., The Kalam Cosmo logical Argument), , God’s relation to time and the origin of the universe in view of big bang cosmology (e.g., God, Time and Eternity), or the coherence of the Christian worldview (e.g., Philosophical Found ations for a Christian Worldview)

The third edition of Reasonable Faith seminally harnesses more than two decades of Craig’s dedicated research, writing, and experience in apologetics, philosophy of religion, and theology. He presents such time-tested work in five parts and eight chapters that are systematic, coherent, and comprehensive. Moreover, the book’s Web companion, www.reasonablefaithtools.com, empowers the outreach of Craig’s ideas by strengthening their accessibility through text and multimedia presentations.

The new and updated topics in the third edition move Reasonable Faith from being merely an introduction to apologetics to now an authoritative guide and a resourceful research assistant for the pastor, seminarian, and professor. This 2008 edition of four hundred-plus pages notably offers:

1. A response to objections by “new atheists” such as biologist Richard Dawkins (e.g., 80–81, 170–74) and philosopher Daniel Dennett (e.g., 83–84, 151–52).

2. Updated scientific findings for cosmological and intelligent design arguments for the existence of God, along with the latest philosophical objections against the moral and ontological arguments for God’s existence (chaps. 3–4).

3. Recent work in probability theory to address David Hume’s arguments against miracles (e.g., 269–77).

4. A case for the messianic identity of Jesus (e.g., 300–327), along with His bodily resurrection in light of interaction with prominent New Testament scholars like John Meier (e.g., 291–92, 353–57), James Dunn (e.g., 315, 324, 327, 385), Bart Ehrman (e.g., 270, 274), and N. T. Wright (e.g., 351–52, 384–85, 393–94).

5. A “practical application” section in order to show the personal significance of each chapter’s thesis.

A second reason why Reasonable Faith has become Craig’s signature title is that its impression has transcended the book, so that its presence can be realized in such places as Craig’s nonprofit apologetics ministry (www.reasonablefaith.org), or the brand can be sensed on the debate trail or at a lecture series where Craig participates, or during an interview on ABC’s 20/20, or at his local church, or in a philosophy of religion seminary classroom. Regardless of occasion, one cannot help but get a whiff of “reasonable faith” whenever Craig is present, even if one vehemently disagrees with him.

The heart of Reasonable Faith will have enduring value if for no other reason than that Craig understands the significance of what is the “ultimate apologetic”: lives that are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a fitting conclusion to his signature title.

In a future edition, however, perhaps this “conclusion” will become a whole chapter that vitally develops how and why apologetics work can and must connect with Christian discipleship, spiritual disciplines, pastoral care, and evangelism. Absent of the local church, apologetics ministry looks weird. Absent of apologetics work, the local church looks defenseless.

Reasonable Faith shows that we can learn how to engage ideas that war against knowledge of God. Indeed, for at least twenty-five years, Craig has personally known exactly what it is like to be tested on the frontline, and this book can help empower and encourage us to do the same.

—Joseph E. Gorra

Joseph E. Gorra is the managing editor of the journal Philosophia Christi.