Van Til: To go on, then, I can recall playing as a child in a sandbox built into a corner of the hay-barn.

Thorn: Okay, this is great, Dr. Van Til. I've always wanted to hear about your childhood. I think we might learn something relevant here. Tell me what happened in the hay-barn.

Van Til: From the hay-barn I would go through the cow-barn to the house. Built into the hay-barn too, but with doors opening into the cow-barn, was a bed for the working-man. How badly I wanted permission to sleep in that bed for a night!

Thorn: I hope you mean when the working-man was not sleeping there, right?

Van Til: Permission was finally given.

Thorn: Do you recall why it was so important to you to sleep in the working-man's bed? Did you have a crush on him?

Van Til: Freud was still utterly unknown to me, but I had heard about ghosts and "forerunners of death."

Thorn: If your parents were indoctrinating you in Christian theism, this is not surprising.

Van Til: That night I heard the cows jingle their chains. I knew there were cows and that they did a lot of jingling with their chains, but after a while I was not quite certain that it was only the cows that made all the noises I heard. Wasn't there someone walking down the aisle back of the cows, and wasn't he approaching my bed?

Thorn: Ah, the awesome power of the imagination! More and more the profile of your god-belief is coming more and more into focus. It sounds like you were scaring yourself.

Van Til: Already I had been taught to say my evening prayers.

Thorn: So it is the case that by then your parents had already begun your indoctrination into the ways of Christian theism. You were already going through the motions.

Van Til: Some of the words of that prayer were to this effect: "Lord, convert me, that I may be converted." Unmindful of the paradox, I prayed that prayer that night as I had never prayed before.

Thorn: So, essentially, your fears compelled you to belief. Your belief was clearly not based on reason, for reason recognizes that feelings are not a means of validating a belief. In fact, from the details which you do recall, it appears that your fear was for the most part a result of your imaginings. This experience solidified your belief up to that point in your life. But even in context of your story, you must have already at least somewhat believed the story that there is a god. And it is clear: you were very young, vulnerable to false ideas and unable to detect or reject them on a firm footing informed by rational philosophy. Most religious believers throughout the world have followed this very general pattern: they are told to believe at a young and impressionable age, perhaps even threatened if that belief is questioned, and as they mature they continue with that belief such that it seems perfectly natural to think it true. When challenged to present a rational validation of the god-belief, reason is turned into a pretzel and distorted beyond recognition. Hence, "TAG."

Van Til: I do not recall speaking either to my father or mother about my distress. They would have been unable to provide the modern remedy. Psychology did not come to their library table -- not even The Ladies Home Journal ! Yet I know what they would have said. Of course there were no ghosts, and certainly I should not be afraid anyway, since with body and soul I belonged to my Savior who died for me on the Cross and rose again that His people might be saved from hell and go to heaven!

Thorn: So, in order to seek emotional from ghosts which do not exist, you fled to belief in a ghost?

Van Til: I should pray earnestly and often that the Holy Spirit might give me a new heart so that I might truly love God instead of sin and myself.

Thorn: Indeed. God forbid that you love yourself! No wonder you want an afterlife! This life must be miserable for you!

Van Til: How do I know that this is the sort of thing they would have told me? Well, that was the sort of thing they spoke about from time to time. Or rather, that was the sort of thing that constituted the atmosphere of our daily life.

Thorn: Exactly what I suspected. You grew up with the influence of your parents' god-belief. Now, philosophy is indispensable to human life; Rand made this fully clear. And, religion is a primitive form of philosophy, and this is also very clear from Rand's writings. Your childhood experience, both the general influence of Christianity in the Van Til home and the particular instances like the time you were frightened in the hay-barn, all served to reinforce in you a general orientation toward life.

Van Til: Ours was not in any sense a pietistic family.

Thorn: It is interesting that you should say this, Dr. Van Til. For you also say that at mealtime in the Van Til household there was not only an opening but also a closing prayer, chapters of the Bible were regularly read and New Testament stories were regularly reviewed. Perhaps there is a continuum of pietism among certain families, and in your experience your family would not register at the extreme. However, in my experience, these practices make your family sound fairly pietistic. But go on.

Van Til: There were not any great emotional outbursts on any occasion that I recall.

Thorn: No, I doubt there were. Most likely everyone in your family was totally obedient. I doubt you were encouraged to question many of the things that were taught to you. Is that the case, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: There was much ado about making hay in the summer and about caring for the cows and sheep in the winter, but round about it all there was a deep conditioning atmosphere.

Thorn: A "deep conditioning atmosphere"? I think that's quite telling, Dr. Van Til. Given the emphasis on religious inputs and the "conditioning atmosphere" of your childhood environment, how could you fail to be steeped in god-belief? Also, since you were denied the principal foundations of a rational philosophy (a consequence of religious indoctrination) and thought that there was only one argument for atheism (as we saw you suggest above), the essential conditions for indoctrination seemed to be in place. All the more if questioning what you were taught was not encouraged.

Van Til: Though there were no tropical showers of revivals, the relative humidity was always very high.

Thorn: That was probably miserable.

Van Til: At every meal the whole family was present. There was a closing as well as an opening prayer, and a chapter of the Bible was read each time. The Bible was read through from Genesis to Revelation. At breakfast or at dinner, as the case might be, we would hear of the New Testament, or of "the children of Gad after their families, of Zephon and Haggi and Shuni and Ozni, of Eri and Areli."

Thorn: So, there was a daily dosage of Christian indoctrination in your childhood.

Van Til: I do not claim that I always fully understood the meaning of it all.

Thorn: Do you understand it all now, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: Yet of the total effect there can be no doubt. The Bible became for me, in all its parts, in every syllable, the very Word of God.

Thorn: Yes, I've seen this before myself. Children in religious families are taught what to believe (not how their minds work and how to use them), and they are often taught to fear retribution if they should dare question those beliefs and ask for their support. Was this kind of fear present in your conditioning process, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: I learned that I must believe the Scripture story,

Thorn: Right. You must believe every Bible tale upon the very hearing of it. While it's one thing that you may believe it on such rationally insufficient grounds, it's quite another to tell others that these stories are true. It sounds like you believed them without any effort put to establishing their truth. Is that the case, Dr. Van Til? How, for instance, would you establish the supposed truth of the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22? Your student John Frame's answer to this question seems to be nothing more than "we know without knowing how we know." [1] Now, that's hardly convincing!

Van Til: and that "faith" was a gift of God.

Thorn: Ah, yes, faith. Here's one of those malleable terms which can be applied in circumstances where reason will obviously be of no use. Dr. Van Til, please do not harbor any delusion that your god-belief is in any way rational here, for you appeal to faith. As Rand put it, "Intellectually, to rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies - that one has no rational arguments to offer." [2] Any argument you thus present in the attempt to defend that faith belief, then, constitutes an effort to use reason in order to validate that which is opposed to reason. Wouldn't this make you a fideist, Dr. Van Til?

Now, I have some points to make in regard to this issue, so please bear with me.

One of your followers, James Anderson, attempts to defend you from this charge in his Van Til FEM. Anderson takes 'fideism' as the view that "our knowledge of God (and of the truth of Christianity) is based on faith apart from any evidence or rational considerations." While it does not say so explicitly, this definition seems to assume that "evidence or rational considerations" are compatible with faith. For, if otherwise, it would seem that the definition "the view that our knowledge of God (and of the truth of Christianity) is based on faith" would be sufficient to apply properly to 'fideism'. That Anderson wants to make fideism a special case of faith at the exclusion of "evidence or rational considerations" leaves open the possibility of assuming that faith and reason are compatible in some way. Of course, I do not agree with this. Indeed, if I have reason to believe something, I need not rest my case for it on faith. And, if I have "evidence or rational considerations," then again resting my conclusion on faith would be unnecessary; it would add nothing to understanding. Furthermore, rationality is the commitment to reason as one's only means of knowledge; it allows for nothing which opposes reason. To compromise reason is to destroy it completely.

Incidentally, Dr. Van Til, to shield you from this charge, Anderson cites two paragraphs from your works which supposedly serve to rescue you from the charge of fideism. The first one is from your book A Survey of Christian Epistemology and it states the following:

It will then be possible to compare the Christian epistemology with any and with all the others. And being thus enabled to compare them all, we are in a position and placed before the responsibility of choosing between them. And this choosing can then, in the nature of the case, no longer be a matter of artistic preference. We cannot choose epistemologies as we choose hats. Such would be the case if it had been once for all established that the whole thing is but a matter of taste. But that is exactly what has not been established. That is exactly the point in dispute. [3] 

I must say, I don't know how this statement is supposed to show that you are not a fideist. It seems that if one wanted to make it clear that he was not a fideist, he would come out and explicitly identify himself as an advocate for reason. And, if a sympathizer wanted to clear a man of the charge of fideism by citing the writings of the accused, he would serve his purpose well by finding a statement in those writings in which the accused clearly and explicitly identified himself as an advocate of reason. But saying that "we cannot choose epistemologies as we choose hats," or that determining the epistemology proper to man is not simply "a matter of taste," is not the same thing as advocating reason in the pursuit and validation of knowledge. Given what you wrote in your tome on epistemology here, Dr. Van Til, it could be that a fideistic "epistemology" is compelled by a matter of force, religious induction or volition-transcending impulse. Neither of these is likeable to choosing hats or adding seasoning to suit one's personal taste.

Let's see if the other paragraph which Anderson cites sheds any more light on the question of your commitment to fideism. This passage, ironically, is taken from the tail end of our present conversation. That's right, it is taken from your essay Why I Believe in God.

In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling. And from that fatal confession we have gone one step further down to the point where we have admitted or virtually admitted that it is not really compelling at all. And so we fall back on testimony instead of argument. After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts. So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, and that one we were blind and that now we see, and give up all intellectual argument. Do you suppose that our God approves of this attitude of His followers? I do not think so. [...] A testimony that is not an argument is not a testimony either, just as an argument that is not a testimony is not even an argument.

It seems clear from the complaint which you give here that you want the basis of Christian belief to be somehow epistemologically compulsive. You complain that personal testimony has replaced reliance on argument in apologetics, and then go on to equate the two. In defending you against the charge of fideism, it appears that Anderson is mistaking the presence of an argument with rationality. For indeed reasoned argument is a necessary element of rationality, it is in nowise sufficient to make one rational. One could present the following "argument":

Premise 1:   If all refrigeration depends on Freon®, then Blarko must exist.
Premise 2:   All refrigeration depends on Freon®.
Conclusion: Therefore, Blarko exists.

Now, it can readily be seen that this argument has a valid form (known as modus ponens), but it cannot be said to be rational, nor could we say that belief in Blarko, if affirmed on the basis of such an argument, is rational. To say that it is, is to misunderstand what rationality is. Luckily, we find an advocate of reason in the philosopher Ayn Rand, who defined 'rationality' with the following:

The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action. It means one's total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, in all of one's waking hours. It means a commitment to the fullest perception of reality within one's power and to the constant, active expansion of one's perception, i.e., of one's knowledge. It means a commitment to the reality of one's own existence, i.e., to the principle that all of one's goals, values and actions take place in reality and, therefore, that one must never place any value or consideration whatsoever above one's perception of reality. [4]

No, don't look in your Bible for a definition of rationality, Dr. Van Til. The term does not even appear anywhere in its pages. But clearly, on this understanding of rationality, the claim that a god-belief can be rationally defended is untenable. Indeed, if you agree with the statement that "God is not found at the end of an argument," then it seems that your god-belief has nothing to do with reason. And then when you do present an argument, it consists of unargued premises. This is customary among many of your followers. A fine example of this is Douglas Wilson's opening statement in his debate with atheist philosophy Theodore Drange, The Transcendental Argument for God's Existence.

Often presuppositionalists take exception to any suggestion that they reject the use of evidence in apologetics. Like you, Dr. Van Til, they say that evidence is allowed, but that evidence needs to be properly "interpreted." Of course, such qualification serves to raise our suspicions. What "evidence" can one present, for instance, on behalf of the claim that the universe came from nothing, that it was created by an act of consciousness (as you yourself say below, "by the counsel of His will")? Anderson hastens to rescue your approach to apologetics from the accusation that it entails a rejection of reliance and incorporation of evidence by stating the following:

Van Til believed that every fact was in some sense evidence of Christian theism, since facts can only be made intelligible on Christian theistic presuppositions. He supported the use of evidence, but opposed in principle the methodology of presenting evidence without challenging the non-Christian presuppositions which are held to interpret that evidence. [5]

Of course, this only serves to confirm the fallaciously circular nature of presuppositionalism, but it also confirms our suspicions. The notion of "non-Christian presuppositions" is so vague and generalized that it seems premature to simply and summarily presuppose that they must all be false.

So, I'm not convinced by these efforts to rescue you from the charge of fideism, Dr. Van Til. I know you don't like this appellation, but you know what they say - if the shoe fits… Besides, Anderson's conception of fideism, which apparently figures in his attempt to defend you from the charge that you are a fideist, is at least somewhat questionable. For instance, another source defines 'fideism' according to the following:

In Catholic thought the view of Abbe Louis Bautain that faith precedes reason with respect to knowledge of God, and that in this respect reason is metaphysically incompetent. The doctrine was condemned in an 1855 decretal. [6]

So, depending on which source you consult, fideism may or may not entail a view in which reason and faith are seen as compatible or complementary. Of course, as an advocate of reason, I would vehemently disagree.

Others have attempted to defend you from this charge as well, Dr. Van Til. For instance, Dr. Richard L. Pratt, Jr., who seems to have put a little more effort into this defense than Anderson has, tells us that "Throughout his books, Van Til emphasized the necessity of 'starting with' or 'presupposing' the truth of Christian theism, but he never meant by this that people should exercise faith apart from careful reflection." [7]

In defending you of this claim, Pratt tells us that you distinguish between "two kinds of starting points." [8] The first is what is called a "proximate starting point of human experience and reason" [9], which apparently consists of people's "knowledge of themselves and the world around them before they acknowledge the God of creation." [10] It seems that this "proximate starting point" would have great influence on what one would consider to be truth prior to encountering and considering the claims of a religious view if they precede that consideration temporally.

The other kind of starting point is what you apparently called the "ultimate starting point for all legitimate human reasoning," which is allegedly "the self-attesting God of Scriptures." [11] This is where you find "the fundamental mistake of non-Christian thought," which is identified to be "a foundational commitment to human autonomy (independence from God). Unbelievers pretend that human reason can be its own ultimate starting point by trying to support their knowledge claims without an ultimate appeal to the God of Scripture." [12] This is quite a charge. I wonder how you would back it up without resorting to your faith commitment. But that's just the problem, Dr. Van Til, if you have to rely on a faith commitment to back up your position on what you consider to be the proper "ultimate starting point," then I don't see how you can escape the charge of fideism.

Pratt says that this "commitment to human autonomy" is "like a man pulling himself up by his own bootstraps." [13] But Pratt neither explains why he thinks this or what he has in mind by "human reason." Again, Dr. Van Til, don't open your Bible, for although the Bible uses the word "reason" in a few trivial instances, it nowhere defines this term, nor does it develop an epistemology of reason or endorse reason as one's sole means of knowledge. "Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses." [14] Reason is how the mind works. It is the knowledge process which works according to the nature of man's mind. Its starting point is the objects of perception: existence exists. And that is the foundation of reason, the bedrock of all thought and knowledge.

Now, I know, Dr. Van Til, you're probably going to ask the very question which is commonly posed by those who want to believe in a god, namely, "Where did existence come from?" But examine this question, Dr. Van Til. You're a smart guy. Can't you see the obvious error in such a question? You do realize that there is such a thing as an invalid question, don't you? Well, this question necessarily invites the fallacy of the stolen concept, which occurs when you assert a concept while denying its genetic roots, i.e., to assert an idea while denying those on which it logically depends. I know, I know, this is very similar to the error you accuse non-Christians of committing when they discard your claim that there is a god and yet proceed to act on reason. Incidentally, I have already responded to this in an essay titled TAG and the Fallacy of the Stolen Concept. It shows how your god-belief commits this commonly overlooked error and how your whole Christian worldview does not incorporate the very principle which is used to generate TAG, which is the fact that rational knowledge is hierarchical in nature.

So, your attempt to dichotomize the starting point is neither necessary nor tenable. If knowledge is to be a wholly integrated and consistent sum, then the idea of different starting points can only confuse things. It surely does not make for solid reasoning about reality. Besides, if we can isolate a genuine "ultimate starting point," such as the Objectivist axioms, your proposed theory has no relevance.

Clearly, Dr. Van Til, you and I must have completely different understandings of what knowledge is. For from my view, what you say here is nonsensical. Echoing your teachings, Pratt tells us that "the only thing that adequately explains how we know and what we know is the self-existent Triune God." [15] Is this why your high-profile pupil John Frame writes, "we know without knowing how we know"? [16] But even more pressing is the question of how exactly does "the self-existent Triune God" explain "how we know and what we know"? It seems that first you would have to show that God exists and then show that it is "the only thing that adequately explains" our knowledge. But in your transcendental argument, that's not what we find going on. Instead, you assert that God is the explanation, and then go on to say that God must exist because God is somehow the best explanation. I'm sure you can see how circular this approach is, but this does not seem to bother you because you seem to openly embrace circular reasoning.

Pratt says that "any other foundational commitment or presupposition will eventually result in utter irrationalism." [17] Well, if that's what he thinks, he must have a completely different idea of what rationality is. Rationality is the commitment to reason as one's sole means of knowledge, just as objectivity is the commitment to the primacy of existence principle. It seems that Pratt wants to hijack legitimate concepts from rational philosophy and put them to use in mysticism. Did you teach him to do this, Dr. Van Til?

Pratt clarifies what the ambition of the apologist should be when he admits, "our goal in apologetics is to call men and women to acknowledge the Christian God as the ultimate starting point for knowledge." [18] But to do this, you would have to give the non-believer some reason why he should accept this view. From what I've read of your work and the works of those who have followed your teachings, I have found only emptiness when seeking out answers to such questions. And, looking back at what you have said about your own belief, it's clear that you believe because you were taught to believe it when you were a child. But as an adult, childish gullibility will never do.

Pratt says that presuppositionalists "are not simply trying to help [adults] think more clearly… We are calling them to forsake the human mind as their ultimate starting point and to give the God of Scriptures his rightful place in their lives." [19] So, essentially, you want men and women to sacrifice their minds and the values which they make possible. Yes, I understand that you have made the decision to make such a sacrifice, Dr. Van Til, and you probably think it is noble. But for those who have a healthy self-esteem, this call will not be heard. Nor should it be heard.

Pratt then cites some of your own statements from your books. Now, I do not know if he is quoting you correctly or not, but there was an error in this first one. From your book The Defense of the Faith (p. 94), you say that "According to the principle of Protestantism, man's consciousness of self and of objects presuppose [sic] for their intelligibility the self-consciousness of God." But why would anyone accept this? What argument could someone ever give to assist in establishing such a claim? It is true, man is conscious, and he is conscious of objects (extrospection) and of his own consciousness (introspection), and this relationship, known in rational philosophy as the issue of metaphysical primacy, is a precondition to intelligibility and knowledge, to be sure. For without consciousness, intelligibility could not be a concern, and without objects, there would be nothing to be conscious of. But what does the God part do? Again, we come across yet another assertion which appears to be wholly indefensible.

Pratt again quotes you (Defense of the Faith, p. 94): "By his counsel the triune God controls whatsoever comes to pass." But this is determinism, and I see now reason to accept it, and I see no way how it could be reconciled with the perceptually self-evident fact that we are volitional beings; our actions are not determined by some plan-executing deity. If that is your impression of reality, then why even argue in the first place? Volition is the power to select between alternatives when they exist. But if everything is determined by some cosmic mind already, then volition is a hallucination at best, and an attempt to persuade me is pure vanity.

Pratt then quotes a statement from the same book which sheds a lot of light on just where you misunderstand non-believing thought, at least my non-believing thought: "If then the human consciousness must, in the nature of the case, always be the proximate starting point, it remains true that God is always the most basic and therefore the ultimate or final reference point in human interpretation." Not only are we not given no reason to accept this, it does not describe Objectivism. The ultimate starting point or reference point in rational philosophy is the objects of consciousness, not consciousness itself. Rational philosophy rejects Cartesian rationalism as an expression of the primacy of consciousness. So, if you think this criticism applies to all non-believing epistemologies, you're sorely mistaken, Dr. Van Til.

Also, I don't see anything which you wrote in the passage which Pratt quotes from your book The Defense of the Faith clears you from the charge of fideism.

Pratt then quotes a paragraph from page 203 of your book Introduction to Systematic Theology. It states the following:

The orthodox notion begins with God as the concrete self-existent being. Thus God is not named according to what is found in the creature, except God has first named the creature according to what is in himself. The only reason why it appears as though God is named according to what is found in the creature is that, as creatures, we must psychologically begin with ourselves in our knowledge of anything. We are ourselves the proximate starting point of all our knowledge. In contrast to this, however, we should think of God as the ultimate starting point of our knowledge. God is the archetype, while we are the ectypes. God's knowledge is archetypal and ours ectypal.

Some of the questions and points which I offered above will only apply here again, so I will not repeat myself. But I must emphasize, Dr. Van Til, it is unclear how anything you write in this passage clears you from the charge of fideism. It seems in each case you speak beyond the issue rather than address it. That's not necessarily your fault, because it was a student or follower of yours in each case quoting you in order to rescue you from this embarrassing charge. But it is clear to me that, if one wanted to avoid being mistaken for a fideist, the obvious thing to do would be to reject faith-based beliefs and become an open advocate for reason. But, presuppositionalists are unwilling to do this because they sense (and rightly, I might add) that this would spell the end of their god-belief.

But consider for a moment, if God is the starting point, by what means (if other than by faith) are you aware of it? You would have to answer this question for the claim that "God is my ultimately starting point" to make any sense. And, if you do not allow that this starting point is known by faith (in order to escape the charge of fideism), then what exactly is the role of faith in your religion? It surely must have some significant role in your epistemology, for the Bible mentions faith repeatedly.

In fact, on a word search exercise comparing the number of instances the word 'faith' appears in the Bible with the number of instances the word 'reason' appears, these were the results I got:

Faith: 219 instances
Reason: 69 instances

Now it should be noted that a good majority of the instances in which the word 'reason' is used, this term could be replaced by either 'purpose' or 'cause' or similar word and still render the same essential meaning. For example, in Exodus 8:24 we read, "And the LORD did so; and there came a grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into all the land of Egypt: the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies." It could just as easily say "the land was corrupted because of the swarm of flies." In other words, when it uses the word 'reason', the Bible is clearly not trying to make an epistemological endorsement. So, faith has to have some role, Dr. Van Til, and if it's not the "means" by which you "know" that God exists, then what is it for? And if it is the "means" by which you "know" that God exists, then how do you escape the obvious fideistic implications of such a position?

Now, I am not necessarily calling you a fideist, Dr. Van Til. Please don't get me wrong. All I'm saying is that the points which have been raised in defending you against this charge seem insufficient to the task.

Anyway, Dr. Van Til, please continue.

Van Til: What had happened in the past, and particularly what had happened in the past in Palestine, was of the greatest moment to me. In short, I was brought up in what Dr. Joad would call "topographical and temporal parochialism."

Thorn: Yes, I understand now your reference to "heredity and environment." Your beliefs are more the result of something that happened to you rather than of your choices and actions. You were born and raised in a Christian family, and in this family you were ceaselessly bombarded with Christian influences and its tenets were continually reinforced in your mind as actually true. Dr. Van Til, thank you for your candor here. This helps me understand a lot!

Van Til: I was "conditioned" in the most thorough fashion. I could not help believing in God -- in the God of Christianity -- in the God of the whole Bible!

Thorn: Well then, I have your answer to my question. You believe because someone told you to believe. Your parents and probably the local church people told you want to believe, and you believed it, accepting all their indoctrination. If you had grown up in Iran, you would have the same loyalty to Islamic beliefs. If you had grown up in India, you would have the same loyalty to Hindu beliefs. We can call this syndrome the unchecked momentum of childhood and adolescent beliefs. Not only were these beliefs unchecked and uncountered, they were encouraged, reinforced, as you say, "conditioned" into your mind as a kind of Pavlovian response. We should demand more explanation if you had not taken these beliefs into your adulthood than if you did.

Van Til: Living next to the Library of Congress, you were not so restricted. Your parents were very much enlightened in their religious views. They read to you from some Bible of the World instead of from the Bible of Palestine.

Thorn: Actually, this does not describe my parents or my childhood. I would not consider either of my parents to be very enlightened in philosophy or wise to the errors of religion. And when they did read from the Bible, it was the same Bible you read, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: No, indeed, you correct me, they did no such thing. They did not want to trouble you about religious matters in your early days. They sought to cultivate the "open mind" in their children.

Thorn: Not quite. There was a time when they tried to indoctrinate me as well, but they soon became frustrated with that effort because I asked penetrating questions and there was nothing they could do to rescue their god-belief from the fatal puncture wounds of just one properly placed question. But we must give them credit: they did try!

Van Til: Shall we say then that in my early life I was conditioned to believe in God, while you were left free to develop your own judgment as you pleased?

Thorn: The outcome certainly suggests this. On the one hand, you yourself have emphasized that your god-belief is the product of a conditioning environment. On the other, my atheism is a consequence of my commitment to reason, and preconditional to reason is the freedom of the mind to draw its judgments by logically integrating its inputs, which should tell us that reason cannot be coerced or forced. It is the voluntary exercise of one's mind.

Van Til: But that will hardly do. You know as well as I that every child is conditioned by its environment.

Thorn: Well, of course, one might be able to present an argument to this end, but even if so, it overlooks that there would be degrees of conditioning, the presence counter-influences which challenge that conditioning and destabilize its hold on a young mind. It also ignores the fact that one's character is the result of his choices and actions and that his verdicts may be established on the basis of reason, a standard which a man must choose in order to accept. Besides, we are not children any more, Dr. Van Til. While the conditioning of your mind in your childhood was sufficient to sustain momentum well into your adulthood and throughout all of your long life, this in no way tells us that correcting the effects of that conditioning was impossible. It also says nothing about the truth value of the content informing that conditioning. Indeed, if it's so true, what is the need for conditioning in the first place?

Van Til: You were as thoroughly conditioned not to believe in God as I was to believe in God.

Thorn: This is simply untrue. Indeed, I was conditioned, probably like you and definitely like many of your followers, that atheism is paramount to evil, that to question the existence of God was to invite the fury of an electric storm on one's soul, and that all the stories about resurrected saints and life after death were all true. You yourself hold that "every child is conditioned" by some overwhelming outside influence (which you euphemistically call "environment"), and there is no doubt that there was an effort to condition me in the direction of a lifelong god-belief. But, I had a mind of my own, which earned me the disapproval of many. But I learned early in life that those who disapprove of my reliance on my ability to reason are free to live their life in accordance to the incompetence of theirs. I saw this as a matter of choice, Dr. Van Til, since I recognized quite early that we all have a fundamental choice: to think, or to evade thinking. I chose to think. This choice led to asking questions which made people who expected me to believe wild claims very uncomfortable.

Van Til: So let us not call each other names.

Thorn: If you'll recall, Dr. Van Til, I'm not the one who introduced the term 'conditioning'; you did.

Van Til: If you want to say that belief was poured down my throat, I shall retort by saying that unbelief was poured down your throat. That will get us set for our argument.

Thorn: Unbelief was certainly not "poured down my throat," Dr. Van Til. In fact, It was not until well after I became an atheist that I met others who were also atheists. To be quite candid, I wanted to believe, just like you do, Dr. Van Til. But I also demanded excruciating honesty from myself. I had to admit to myself that something is not true simply because I want it to be true. There is an objective nature to truth, and I had to come to terms with it if I wanted to be honest to myself. Thus, I had no choice but to recognizing the rational propriety of atheism.

Now, I look forward to your argument, Dr. Van Til.