Van Til: By this time you are probably wondering whether I have really ever heard the objections which are raised against belief in such a God. Well, I think I have.

Thorn: Well congratulations, Dr. Van Til! You must be about as omniscient as your god!

Van Til: I heard them from my teachers who sought to answer them.

Thorn: I can only wonder what their guiding philosophical principles were. Since you have pointed out for us that you went primarily to religious schools throughout your life, your teachers were most likely themselves religious. As you had stated in your section titled "Later Schooling," all of your teachers "were pledged to teach their subjects from the Christian point of view." Well, if that's the case, then clearly they had a bias to protect, and the urge to protect it could not have been more acute as when considering arguments opposing god-belief. I have witnessed firsthand on numerous occasions how strong the temptation is for apologists to misrepresent the arguments and positions of non-believing thinkers. We can find evidence of this from C.S. Lewis to Greg Bahnsen, from Michael Butler to Douglas Wilson. Do you think we should have any confidence in the supposition that your teachers were immune to such temptations? Do you think they successfully resisted such temptations, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: I also heard them from teachers who believed they could not be answered.

Thorn: In those occasions, did you take Jesus' advice, to "have faith, and doubt not" (cf. Matt. 21:21), or James' advice to avoid "wavering" in the faith? It's clear that such advice amounts to urging believers to suppress their doubts. When a teacher told you that he did not think that a particular atheological argument could be answered from the religious standpoint, did you have any doubts at that point and, if so, did you suppress those doubts? Here is where you will have to be most honest, Dr. Van Til. Don't tell me, because it is not I who is in your mind. You must be honest to yourself now.

Van Til: While a student at Princeton Seminary I attended summer courses in the Chicago Divinity School. Naturally I heard the modern or liberal view of Scripture set forth fully there. And after graduation from the Seminary I spent two years at Princeton University for graduate work in philosophy. There the theories of modern philosophy were both expounded and defended by very able men.

Thorn: I think I already know the answer to this, but did you ever study the work of any Objectivists? No, I didn't think so.

Van Til: In short I was presented with as full a statement of the reasons for disbelief as I had been with the reasons for belief.

Thorn: That's interesting, since you believed since you were a child and could not have possibly understood at that time why you believed, even supposing you had reasons other than obedience to your parents for believing what they taught to you. Oh sure, later you rehearsed arguments intended to rationalize your keeping with those beliefs in your adulthood, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

Van Til: I heard both sides fully from those who believed what they taught.

Thorn: Let me understand what you're saying here, then, Dr. Van Til. You are saying you believe in God, and that you've heard all the arguments against god-belief defended by able men who believed what they taught. Are we then to take it on your word that the claim that God exists is true nonetheless? Again, on what basis?

Van Til: You have compelled me to say this by the look on your face.

Thorn: If you're trying to dispel my yearning for a hamburger right now, it's not working.

Van Til: Your very gestures suggest that you cannot understand how any one acquainted with the facts and arguments presented by modern science and philosophy can believe in a God who really created the world, who really directs all things in the world by a plan to the ends He has in view for them.

Thorn: No, you misread my gestures, Dr. Van Til. I've known many people who have been made well aware of the facts of a case, but have chosen to deny or ignore them in preference for something which they for some reason or another find more comfortable than the facts. Some people are uncomfortable with the fact that one day they will die and their lives will come to an end. In response to this fear, they invent the notion of an afterlife and substitute life on earth with this post-mortem fantasy as the standard of value in their life. That otherwise well educated individuals choose to be dishonest is not newsworthy information, Dr. Van Til. I just wonder why people would want to spend their lives that way.

Van Til: Well, I am only one of many who hold to the old faith in full view of what is said by modern science, modern philosophy, and modern Biblical criticism.

Thorn: Of course I'm aware of this, Dr. Van Til. You were not the only one who was indoctrinated from his earliest youth in a primitive worldview. But I'm not interested in the number of like-believing folk right now, Dr. Van Til. I'm more interested in hearing the reasons you found later in life to buttress that indoctrination. Please, proceed.

Van Til: Obviously I cannot enter into a discussion of all the facts and all the reasons urged against belief in God. There are those who have made the Old Testament, as there are those who have made the New Testament, their life-long study. It is their works you must read for a detailed refutation of points of Biblical criticism.

Thorn: I've read my share of them, Dr. Van Til. And of the portion which I have read, it is interesting to note that no two scholars seem to agree on everything biblical, be it the teachings of the Bible or the supposed historical veracity of it. While one will say that the story of creation should be taken as metaphorical, another will say it is literally accurate. Above you yourself mentioned "the modern or liberal view of Scripture" which you heard at Chicago Divinity School and rejected. No doubt some of those who promulgated these modern, liberal interpretations of the Bible were people who had chosen the Bible as "their life-long study." So, it all depends whose work one reads, I suppose, for they each seem to have a different take on the same matters.

Van Til: Others have specialized in physics and biology.

Thorn: Ah, something useful! How refreshing that must have been to find!

Van Til: To them I must refer you for a discussion of the many points connected with such matters as evolution.

Thorn: What, to biologists? Well, if only some of your students and followers would take you up on this advice! They tend to parrot each other on such matters, rather than consult the experts and deal with their discoveries on their terms.

Van Til: But there is something that underlies all these discussions. And it is with that something that I now wish to deal.

Thorn: Please go right ahead, Dr. Van Til. I'm listening.

Van Til: You may think I have exposed myself terribly. Instead of talking about God as something vague and indefinite, after the fashion of the modernist, the Barthians, and the mystic, a god so empty of content and remote from experience as to make no demands upon men, I have loaded down the idea of God with "antiquated" science and "contradictory" logic.

Thorn: Every believer invests himself uniquely in the creation of his image of God, Dr. Van Til. In your mind your image of God is contrasted with another man's image of God to his disadvantage, and likewise does he contrast his to yours. But since neither of you are talking about anything which exists in reality, you have no recourse to reason to settle differences. Sure, in our modern society you can't pull a John Calvin and assemble a Consistory to burn accused heretics at the stake along with their writings. You have to bite your upper lip, Dr., and maintain an air of civility, suppressing your resentment all the while.

Van Til: It seems as though I have heaped insult upon injury by presenting the most objectionable sort of God I could find.

Thorn: To be honest, Dr. Van Til, I don't know what could be any more objectionable about your god as opposed to Karl Barth's. After all, I have no god-belief. The distinctions between your god-belief and Barth's, for instance, may seem striking and outrageous to you, but to me these distinctions do not lie in essentials. In fact, they both are expressions of the same fundamental error. So please, Dr. Van Til, don't worry about me.

Van Til: It ought to be very easy for you to prick my bubble. I see you are ready to read over my head bushels of facts taken from the standard college texts on physics, biology, anthropology, and psychology, or to crush me with your sixty-ton tanks taken from Kant's famous book, The Critique of Pure Reason.

Thorn: No, nothing of the sort. In fact, you flatter yourself here, Dr. Van Til. None of those things are needed to correct your fantasy that a god exists. All I need is one single principle - the primacy of existence - and its corollary implications, and your god-belief simply disintegrates.

Van Til: But I have been under these hot showers now a good many times. Before you take the trouble to open the faucet again there is a preliminary point I want to bring up. I have already referred to it when we were discussing the matter of test or standard.

Thorn: That's fine, Dr. Van Til. After all, I'm not interested in trying to "deconvert" you. Remember, you're the one who wants to change my mind. Besides, I know that you have compromised your ability to reason, and thus are not open to rational ideas.

Van Til: The point is this. Not believing in God, we have seen, you do not think yourself to be God's creature.

Thorn: I tell you, Dr. Van Til, your mind is like a steel trap! Nothing gets by you!

Van Til: And not believing in God you do not think the universe has been created by God.

Thorn: Existence exists. The universe is the sum total of everything that exists. It is irrational to say that it was created. It makes even less sense to say that it was created "ex nihilo" by an act of will.

Van Til: That is to say, you think of yourself and the world as just being there.

Thorn: Well, whatever you start with, it is what it is whether anyone likes it. That's the nature of a starting point. Even if you want to say that God is your starting point, you can't escape this point. You want to start with a god; well, on your view, that god is just there. Now, you don't affirm the view that god was created, do you Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: Now if you actually are God's creature, then your present attitude is very unfair to Him.

Thorn: Actually, I would disagree. For my attitude to be rightfully judged as unfair, it would require more than just that God exists for this to be. I would also have to know that God exists for my attitude to be unfair, if indeed even then it could be deemed unfair. You see, there is a context which must be held intact when we make such judgments. I can only act on what I do know, on the knowledge which I have validated. The claim that a god exists cannot be rationally integrated with the knowledge which I have validated, Dr. Van Til. Would you expect me to accept your claim that there is a god in spite of that fact, Dr. Van Til? Would you really prefer that I betray my reason in order to affirm with you that this invisible magic being exists? Christians are known for talking up honesty, but you should understand that I would have to be dishonest to myself to claim belief that a god exist. I won't do it, because I won't be dishonest to myself. I hope you understand what I'm saying here.

Van Til: In that case it is even an insult to Him.

Thorn: Well, it could only be an insult to your god if your god demands that those who believe in him abandon their reason to do so. But that's really what this discussion is all about: you want to make it seem reasonable to believe. So far, you've made no headway toward that goal, Dr. Van Til. I keep waiting for you to present something compelling for your side. But I've seen only empty claims against the backdrop of a childhood fantasy that you never let go of in your adult years.

Van Til: And having insulted God, His displeasure rests upon you.

Thorn: Well, Dr. Van Til, I'm ready to take that risk. My honesty has kindled the wrath of many before, Dr. Van Til. If your god is so insecure that he should be insulted by my choice to be honest to myself rather than deny reason, I'd say he's got some real problems. My assent to your god-belief would not make those problems go away, Dr. Van Til. You should be adult enough to recognize that, don't you?

Van Til: God and you are not on "speaking terms."

Thorn: I do not speak to the non-existent or the invisible. If your god wants me to talk to him, he'll have to show his face. But I'm sure you'll have some reason why he won't do that, right Dr. Van Til? It's all so convenient!

Van Til: And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that He does not exist.

Thorn: Actually, I don't have to try to prove that god does not exist, nor do I try to. Assuming that I must prove that something exists in order to justify my atheism (as if it needed to be justified), is simply naïve, Dr. Van Til. Instead, I simply show that the belief that a god does exist rests on an invalid premise. But I'm glad you recognize that my reasons for doing so are good. Indeed, in my estimate, the future of mankind is at stake.

Van Til: If He does exist, He will punish you for your disregard of Him.

Thorn: Well, so you claim. But you should understand, Dr. Van Til, threats of this nature are no substitute for reason and argument. I thought you were going to present an argument. I have been told by many of your followers that you cornered the apologetic market on some new hard-hitting argument, that your understanding was matched only by St. Paul. But here you resort to threats, like a man who has no argument to begin with, in order to compel believe when in fact I've already explained that I would have to be dishonest to myself to affirm your views. I'll ask you again: do you prefer that I be honest to myself, and thus risk that I will never accept your god-belief, or do you think I should accept your claims about god and renounce my integrity? I've already made my choice, and I think we see what your choice has been.

Van Til: You are therefore wearing colored glasses.

Thorn: This does not follow from anything you've said above, Dr. Van Til. And issuing a threat as you do does not validate your implication that I am unreasonably biased here. My bias is toward my honesty and reason. I don't know why you would object to this or attempt to lampoon it by such remarks. Perhaps you have not met many people who have chosen to be honest to themselves like I have?

Van Til: And this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons for not believing in Him.

Thorn: Actually, reason does this for me. If you have some new information for me to input into my reasoning process, please identify and validate it, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: You have had your picnics and hunting parties there without asking His permission.

Thorn: I do not ask invisible magic beings for permission before I go on picnics, Dr. Van Til. Besides, why would your god object? What possible reason could an omnipotent magic being have against me enjoying a picnic? As for hunting parties, I've never gone hunting before. That pastime does not interest me in the least.

Van Til: You have taken the grapes of God's vineyard without paying Him any rent and you have insulted His representatives who asked you for it.

Thorn: He can bill me. And so far you've not asked me for any rent money. Are you going to now? Is that why you want to be your god's representative, so you can threaten cash out of the gullible? Dr. Van Til! You should be ashamed!

Van Til: I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain.

Thorn: Oh, it's been made plenty plain to me, Dr. Van Til, by you and by many others. You want me to surrender my reason and my integrity. That's crystal clear. I just want to know why. Will you tell me?

Van Til: Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are.

Thorn: Well, given the fact that you have to deal with those facts as they really are in order to live each day, I do not see this as a surprise. But, if you want to say that the facts are different, then your actions and choices should reflect this. Just don't complain to me when it has a drastic affect on your ability to survive.

Van Til: In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree.

Thorn: I hold that existence exists. Do you disagree with this position? I'd be curious to know your answer to this, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly.

Thorn: Dr. Van Til, whether or not you grant it or not is not the issue. It is not yours to grant in the first place. You are clearly overstepping your boundary. If your religious beliefs are so true, you shouldn't have to become so obtrusive to show this. If it's true that a god exists, then reason should be fit for the task of discovering it. Instead, you utter threats. That's a dead give-away that you have no argument, Sir.

Van Til: We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter.

Thorn: You've been trying to convince yourself of this for many years, Dr. Van Til. It would not surprise me that, at this point in your life, you have lost the ability to distinguish between fact and fantasy when assessing others.

Van Til: We should have told you this more plainly than we did.

Thorn: I don't know how more plain it could be. You believe in invisible magic beings, risen zombies, and burning bushes which speak human language. I do not. The differences could not be more plain, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position.

Thorn: If you are ashamed of your position, why did you want to get others to believe it? I think your actions, given your shame, are what is odd and extreme. How do you sleep at night?

Van Til: We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God.

Thorn: Well, now you've offended everyone, Dr. Van Til. Now what are you going to do?

Van Til: But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is. He wants to be presented as the All-Conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny Him must stand.

Thorn: And, like a robot, you're just going to obey unquestioningly, even if it lands you the same end as Jesus, willingly embracing a premature death? Well, at your age of wrinkled glory, Dr. Van Til, I suppose you don't have to worry much about that.

Van Til: Now in presenting all your facts and reasons to me, you have assumed that such a God does not exist.

Thorn: Well, not really, Dr. Van Til. I do not assert facts on the basis of negative assumptions. Rather, they are asserted on a positive basis, a basis identified by the axioms. I have not asserted any facts on the assumption that your god does not exist any more than I have asserted facts on the assumption that Blarko does not exist. But it is clear that you want merely to assume that your god exists, and avoid any attempt to validate that assumption. Claiming as you have that this god is the ground of reasoning or the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of human experience, is hardly convincing. Nothing necessitates it but your desire to believe it.

Van Til: You have taken for granted that you need no emplacement of any sort outside of yourself.

Thorn: But that's just not true, Dr. Van Til. Perhaps this caricature goes over well with your students, but it doesn't with me. I recognize that my life has a real context to it, and that context is reality itself, the realm of existence. For instance, just to be conscious, there must be objects of which I can gain awareness. I have no delusion that I live in a vacuum of some kind, as your words here suggest. You are speaking where you have no firsthand knowledge, Sir. You are filling in the blanks of your own ignorance here. It has no bearing on what really is. But you don't appear to be listening to me.

Van Til: You have assumed the autonomy of your own experience.

Thorn: Well, here's another one of your signature stolen concepts, Dr. Van Til. Your pupil, Greg Bahnsen, defines 'autonomy' as "the attempt to live apart from any law external to the self." [1] But clearly I have assumed the autonomy of my experience, or that I assume that my experience is somehow immune to objective law in some way or manner. You simply throw out the accusation in order to put me on the defensive. We saw above how you admitted to being "a little ashamed," and in order to protect your fragile ego, you want to lob a series of charges at me, simply because I don't share your god-belief. You try to cover your shame with shameful tactics. And that's a crying shame, Dr. Van Til! But to correct you, I will add that my every thought, choice and action coheres with the law of identity, Dr. Van Til. I do not attempt to live my life as if there were no such law. The law of identity is a corollary of the fact that existence exists. It does not require one to assert the existence of an invisible magic being to "account" for this law. I simply open my eyes and perceive the objects with which my senses come into contact. There's no mystery here, Dr. Van Til. And there's no warrant for your baseless charges. If people are offended by what you say, Dr. Van Til, it's because you intend to insult their intelligence with your desperate religious defenses, and the only way you seem to have chosen to do this is to attack them personally. Now, Sir, again I ask: Why do you choose to do this?

Van Til: Consequently you are unable -- that is, unwilling -- to accept as a fact any fact that would challenge your self-sufficiency.

Thorn: Again, you stand on mischaracterization in order to pass out such flimsy remarks, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: And you are bound to call that contradictory which does not fit into the reach of your intellectual powers.

Thorn: I call contradictory that which violates the law of identity, Dr. Van Til. Why would you have a problem with this?

Van Til: You remember what old Procrustes did. If his visitors were too long, he cut off a few slices at each end; if they were too short, he used the curtain stretcher on them.

Thorn: You should hope to sleep as well, Dr. Van Til, the way you carry on so dishonestly.

Van Til: It is that sort of thing I feel that you have done with every fact of human experience.

Thorn: The operative word here, Dr. Van Til, is your word "feel." See, you haven't relied on reason here to make these charges and accusations. No, you have a far superior means of arriving at that which you want to call "Truth": your feelings. If you don't like something, or if something does not comport willfully with your primitive philosophy, then you condemn it by somehow "feeling" its deficiencies. This is rather transparent, Dr. Van Til. I'm disappointed in you.

Van Til: And I am asking you to be critical of this your own most basic assumption.

Thorn: My most basic assumption is the most basic assumption one could have: existence exists. If you want to assert something "more fundamental" than existence, then you have two choices: begin with non-existence (and have no way to get to existence), or commit the fallacy of the stolen concept, which is what you have chosen to do in the case of your god-belief. You want to assert a form of consciousness prior to existence, which is pure fallacy.

Van Til: Will you not go into the basement of your own experience to see what has been gathering there while you were busy here and there with the surface inspection of life?

Thorn: Come on now, Dr. Van Til, stop bluffing. You know you're beat on this matter.

Van Til: You may be greatly surprised at what you find there.

Thorn: In fact, you're right. I took exactly that advice, and I was surprised how fundamental the error of god-belief is, and how quickly and easily it disintegrates upon the explicit recognition of the most basic assumption. You really should take your own advice some time, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: To make my meaning clearer, I shall illustrate what I have said by pointing out how modern philosophers and scientists handle the facts and doctrines of Christianity.

Thorn: Okay, be my guest, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: Basic to all the facts and doctrines of Christianity and therefore involved in the belief in God, is the creation doctrine.

Thorn: You're making my point for me! Thank you, Dr. Van Til! You went straight for the root error of your god-belief: the primacy of consciousness. How astute of you! Perhaps my intellect is rubbing off on you after all? Now only if my honesty would! I suppose you're right - that's a significantly different issue.

Van Til: Now modern philosophers and scientists as a whole claim that to hold such a doctrine or to believe in such a fact is to deny our own experience.

Thorn: I would agree, but perhaps for reasons different from what they gave. I do not know most philosophers to have an explicit understanding of the issue of metaphysical primacy or of objectivity.

Van Til: They mean this not merely in the sense that no one was there to see it done, but in the more basic sense that it is logically impossible.

Thorn: I say rather that it is conceptually fallacious and therefore there can be no good reason to accept it as legitimate knowledge. I've presented my reasons above. They are clear to see. You believe it, not because you think it is rationally valid, but because you want it to be true. As you admitted above, your feelings are the basis of your epistemology, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: They assert that it would break the fundamental laws of logic.

Thorn: That's true, it does break the fundamental laws of logic. It does this by reversing the objective relationship between consciousness and existence. By asserting consciousness prior to existence, you adopt the subjective view of reality - that the subject holds metaphysical primacy over the object. Subjectivism in metaphysics is the view that existence finds its source in a form of consciousness, and that fits the description of the biblical doctrine of creation to a T.

Van Til: The current argument against the creation doctrine derives from Kant. It may fitly be expressed in the words of a more recent philosopher, James Ward: "If we attempt to conceive of God apart from the world, there is nothing to lead us on to creation" (Realm of Ends , p. 397). That is to say, if God is to be connected to the universe at all, he must be subject to its conditions.

Thorn: Well, of course, the whole creation story is actually very easy to show to be invalid. Notice how most discussions of creation and so-called "first cause" arguments about the universe, never offer a definition of what the term 'universe' is taken to mean. In fact, Dr. Van Til, you don't even offer a definition of this term. In this silence of definition, you keep vague what you're talking about. So, the first thing to do, since we are talking about the universe, is to define the term in question. Webster's defines 'universe' as "the whole body of things and phenomena observed and postulated." Objectivism defines 'universe' as "the total of that which exists - not merely the earth or the stars or the galaxies, but everything." [2] Now, clearly, Dr. Van Til, on this definition, the notion that the universe was "created" is completely incoherent; it is cut off at the ankles before one can even throw out an argument to rescue the rogue notion. The only logical answer to this unnecessary problem is that the universe is eternal in the literal sense - i.e., out of time. Since time is the measure of motion, time obviously presupposes existence, and thus there must be existence (i.e., the universe) in order to speak of time in the first place, for only if there is something that exists can there be any motion.

Now, you might take issue with my definition, Dr. Van Til, but I think you would face some problems with that effort. For one thing, the question will linger, why didn't you present your definition when you presented your case for the creation notion? Was your definition asserted only in response to a position whose definition of 'universe' cannot logically allow for the notion of a creation of the universe? What is the source of your definition? Is the source of your definition the Bible? And, if you reject the Objectivist definition of 'universe', what concept do you propose to take the place of the Objectivist conception currently represented in Objectivism by the term 'universe', namely a concept which includes as a whole everything which exists? All of these questions would need to be addressed, and it is suspected that at this point you would simply be attempting to gerrymander semantics in order to salvage a demolished argument.

Van Til: Here is the old creation doctrine. It says that God has caused the world to come into existence. But what do we mean by the word "cause"? In our experience, it is that which is logically correlative to the word "effect". If you have an effect you must have a cause and if you have a cause you must have an effect. If God caused the world, it must therefore have been because God couldn't help producing an effect. And so the effect may really be said to be the cause of the cause. Our experience can therefore allow for no God other than one that is dependent upon the world as much as the world is dependent upon Him.

Thorn: Well, hopefully now with the points I have just made, you can put to rest all your trouble toiling against such unnecessary imbroglios. And even if you could prove that a god exists, it would have to be part of the universe, for reasons I explained above. But of course, that would be problematic for you, Dr. Van Til. "It has often been noted that a proof of God would be fatal to religion: a God susceptible of proof would have to be finite and limited; He would be one entity among others within the universe, not a mystic omnipotence transcending science and reality. What nourishes the spirit of religion is not proof, but faith, i.e., the undercutting of man's mind." [3]  So, you're stuck, Dr. Van Til.