Summoning Plantinga's Help in Responding to My Own Starlight Argument

Some time back, I posted an argument against the young earth view of creation. In that post, I stated that if young earth creationism is true, then we can see stars which are millions of light years away which never existed until most of the light years necessary for the light to reach earth would have already transpired. At its most basic level, my argument asserted that the Young Earth model of creationism yielded a God whose world is not epistemologically discernible. If, I argued, God has caused the stars in the sky to have the appearance of having existed at a time when they did not, then foundations for knowledge are undercut. The very first act in the universe appears to have had intertwined with it, a deception.

Others have argued – and this is perhaps the most persuasive argument possible – that God created the light already in transit. In response, it is first important to note that the argument is not that God could not create the light already in transit. That is not in question. What is in question is the implications for general revelation and knowledge in general if God causes things to appear a certain way when they are not (or were not) actually so. This argument tells us that, though the speed of light is basically constant, it was created in transit to earth...My basic argument is that if one wants to deny that the stars which are millions of light years away existed as we see them, then they are not epistemologically justified in believing in the existence of the sun.

Well now, as some of you who follow Bring the Books regularly know, I am a newly minted Young Earther myself. How - it must be asked, do I respond to my own views with regard to the issue of Starlight and its implications for epistemology?

What is most apparent to me, with regard to my starlight argument, is that it proves too much. If, in fact, it destroys knowledge and science (for God to cause something to happen which is contrary to the observable natural order) then we are left with a Bultmanian task of de-mytholization or else a gross unwillingness to follow our principles where they lead.

Until recently, I did not have a very well thought-through philosophy of the relationship between miracles and epistemology. But in Alvin Plantinga's newest book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, he discusses precisely this issue.

Miracles are often thought to be problematic, in that God, if he were to perform a miracle, would be involved in "breaking," going contrary to, abrogating, suspending, a natural law. But given this conception of law, if God were to perform a miracle, it wouldn't at all involve contravening a natural law. That is because, obviously, any occasion on which God performs a miracle is an occasion when the universe is not causally closed; and the law says nothing about what happens when the universe is not causally closed. Indeed, on this conception it isn't even possible that God breaks a law of nature. For to break a law, he would have to act specially in the world; yet any time at which he acted specially in the world would be a time at which the universe is not causally closed; hence no law applies to the circumstances in question and hence no law gets broken.

Loc. 1259-65, Kindle Edition

Here is where Plantinga's thoughts help us regain our footing in dealing with the supposed negative epistemological ramifications for a model of creation which involves God's violating the natural order. The original creation of the universe was not done while nature was a closed system. As a matter of fact, the creation itself was an open event which was already contrary to the natural laws as we commonly think of them. It follows that the starlight which we see, if it was created 10,000 years ago (give or take) originated in an open system and not within a closed system. Science is not able to credibly rule on whether the universe is an open or a closed system since that would be a metaphysical claim which is outside of its purview.

If Plantinga is right, and it is technically not possible for God to break the laws of nature then we must dispense with this whole idea that an act of special creation ought to reflect the fingerprint of something created within an open system (i.e. not everything in the universe should not necessarily be expected to look less than 10,000 years old). It may not be possible for us to tell the difference between God's common work and what we often know as the miraculous. Another way of looking at it is, we ought not to reduce God's work to "within nature" and "against nature." Just because starlight was created rather recently does not mean that it is incumbent upon God to let the light take the billion-odd years that are supposed to have been taken for it to reach earth. Nor does it render science or knowledge impossible. Although we deduce from the speed of light and the distance of the stars that it has taken billions of years for this light to reach us, this is only a valid deduction if we understand all of the circumstances related to the creation of stars and light. The circumstances of the Creation, however, are far more mysterious than we would often like to admit. As has been argued to me by many young-earthers, it is no more contrary to the laws of nature for God to create light "in transit" than for God to create in the first place.

If the old-earth defender wants to dig his heels in here, he must be able to account for the fact that God's existence (given an orthdox understanding of God) means that nature is not a closed system. How does an old-earther argue for an old universe based on the speed of light without painting himself into a Bultmanian view of nature which requires natural consistency from beginning to end, ala the closed system model? I'm not sure. Perhaps someone will offer me an answer in the comments.

Shedd on Knowledge in the Afterlife

I spent the afternoon reading a sermon by American Presbyterian theologian W.G.T. Shedd (1820-1894) titled "The Future State a Self-Conscious State." This was taken from his volume Sermons to the Natural Man. In the sermon, Shedd argues that our quality of knowledge in the afterlife will differ significantly from what we enjoy here. Specifically, Shedd is focused on the knowledge which natural men - who do not know God - will enjoy in the afterlife.

Shedd's sermon is based on 1 Cor. 13:12, which reads, "Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

The three broad points which Shedd's sermon is laying forth are as follows:

I. "The human mind, in eternity, will have a distinct and unvarying perception of the character of God." Shedd - nearly quoting Lewis (anachronistically), says the following: "The future state of every man is to be an open and unavoidable vision of God. If he delights in the view, he will be blessed; if he loathes it, he will be miserable. This is the substance of heaven and hell. This is the key to the eternal destiny of every human soul. If a man love God, he shall gaze at him and adore; if he hate God, he shall gaze at him and gnaw his tongue for pain."

II. "He will know himself even as he is known by God." This is so dreadful, says Shedd, because man spends so much time hiding behind willful self-deception, which will no longer protect man once he knows himself as God knows him.

III. He will have "a clear understanding of the nature and wants of the soul." Connected to this point, he says the following: "Man has that in his constitution, which needs God, and which cannot be at rest except in God. A state of sin is a state of alienation and separation from the Creator. It is, consequently, in its intrinsic nature, a state of restlessness and dissatisfaction."

In the beginning, Shedd argues that "a false theory of the future state will not protect a man from future misery." He then argues, on top of this, that "indifference and carelessness respecting the future life will not protect the soul from future misery." (This point seems especially relevant in our own day of shallow thinking, frequent distraction, and naively optimistic indifference.)

In his conclusion to part one of the sermon, Shedd concludes that "only faith in Christ and a new heart can protect the soul from future misery." He goes on:

You must love this holiness without which no man can see the Lord. You may approve of it, you may praise it in other men, but if there is no affectionate going out of your own heart toward, the holy God, you are not in right relations to Him.

I just shared the cliff's notes version of the sermon, but it is almost a shameful summary, because it is one of the most glorious and tremendously insightful sermons I have read in recent memory. In conclusion, I want to recommend Shedd's volume of 20 sermons in Sermons to the Natural Man. You can get this volume for free in various formats from Project Gutenberg by clicking here.

Agnosticism Makes Knowledge Impossible

In chapter seven of Warranted Christian Belief, Alvin Plantinga discusses the epistemological implications of agnosticism - specifically David Hume's formulation of it.

I shall argue that one who displays a certain kind of agnosticism with respect to his origin and place in the universe, and also grasps a certain cogent argument, will not, in fact, know anything at all; nothing he believes will have warrant sufficient for knowledge (218).

Plantinga then reminds us that a skeptical position does not know where we have gotten our faculties from. He reminds us that when it comes to where the universe came from, Hume declares, "A total suspense of judgment is here our only reasonable resource." Not only does the agnostic not know where our faculties came from, but he does not know the exact purpose which they were designed to serve.

Given agnosticism, our cognitive faculties could have come from any number of logically possible sources:

• We might have been created by God.
• We might have arisen from vegetative principle.
• We might have arise from copulation on the part of animals we know not of.
• The list of possibilities goes on and on.

In some of these possibilities, we would have warrant for believing our faculties to be reliable, but not in all of them. Given agnosticism, we do not have epistemological grounds for discerning which possibility is legitimate and which is not. As such, Plantinga says that the probability of our faculties actually being reliable is inscrutable - or unknowable. Here is how he expresses it:

R = The Proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable
F = The relevant facts about our faculties' origin, purpose, and provenance
P = Probability

P(R/F) is unknowable. "Another way to put it: the probability of R given Hume's agnosticism is inscrutable." Plantinga uses a story to illustrate. He suggests a scenario where our space ship lands on a distant planet and upon cracking upon the door of the spaceship we find a radio that is telling us things that we have no knowledge of (what the weather in Beijing is, whether Caesar had eggs on toast on the morning he crossed the Rubicon, whether the first human to cross the Bering Strait into North America was right or left handed, and so on). Plantinga reminds us that although this device is spitting out information, we have no grounds for believing its statements to be factual because we do not know what its purpose is, or whether it has a purpose. "You see that the probability of its being reliable, given what you know about it, is for you inscrutable."

The fact that we do not know what the device's purpose is, or whether it has a purpose is the defeater for the proposition that the device speaks the truth. We are not warranted in believing what the device is telling us, given this defeater. Plantinga then applies this to agnosticism.

Because B is just any belief I hold - because I have a defeater for just any belief I hold - I also have a defeater for my belief that I have a defeater for B. This universal, all-purpose defeater provided by my agnosticism is also a defeater for itself, a self-defeating defeater...Thus the true skeptic will be skeptical all the way down; he "will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as his philosophical conviction" (226)

Skepticism is self-defeating. It is the undefeatable defeater. "That is because any doubt about our cognitive faculties generally is a doubt about the specific faculty that produces this conviction."

Even if our apologetic methodology differs from Plantinga's, even if we disagree with his arguments in God Freedom and Evil, this is a very strong argument, and one which we Van Tillians should be quick to utilize. This argument is very similar to Plantinga's argument that naturalism is self-defeating, and I plan on taking up that argument as well at some point in the future.