Van Til: The God of Christianity cannot meet these requirements of the autonomous man.

Thorn: Oh, now Dr. Van Til, you can do better than this. Why not be honest about it? Your conception of a god is simply not rationally tenable. It cannot meet the requirements of reason. It is an unreasonable belief. Why is it so hard for you to admit this?

Van Til: He claims to be all-sufficient.

Thorn: No, you claim this, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: He claims to have created the world, not from necessity but from His free will.

Thorn: Again, no, you claim this, Dr. Van Til. The primitives who developed the idea put this claim in the mouth of their invention. Besides, what possible purpose would free will serve an indestructible and perfect being?

Van Til: He claims not to have changed in Himself when He created the world.

Thorn: No, this is the claim of men, Dr. Van Til. You simply accept it and repeat it as if it were true.

Van Til: His existence must therefore be said to be impossible and the creation doctrine must be said to be an absurdity.

Thorn: The notion that the universe was created is arbitrary, and that grown adults would believe it and even be willing to die (or even kill!) for this belief is absurd.

Van Til: The doctrine of providence is also said to be at variance with experience. This is but natural. One who rejects creation must logically also reject providence.

Thorn: You seem to miss the whole point of such notions as "the doctrine of providence," Dr. Van Til. They're not supposed to mirror experience. They are supposed to confound the believer and captivate his imagination. If the arbitrary is successful in captivating a thinker's imagination, he will invest himself in it, elaborating the details so that they become personally integrated into a dreamlike world which blurs his grasp of reality. This is the mechanism of religion in a nutshell, and it can be intoxicating to those who are intimidated by reality, or by those who are successful in dealing with reality.

Van Til: If all things are controlled by God's providence, we are told, there can be nothing new and history is but a puppet dance.

Thorn: Well, of course, that's an old debate, but it's quite tiresome. The question which needs to be asked is what will it accomplish?

Van Til: You see then that I might present to you great numbers of facts to prove the existence of God.

Thorn: It's your breath, Dr. Van Til. I could not prove to you that your god-belief is irrational because you reject reason. Likewise, you could not get me to believe that a god exists because I reject faith. So, we're even, Dr. Van Til. But, it's up to you if you want to waste your breath.

Van Til: I might say that every effect needs a cause.

Thorn: By definition, I would agree. But in order to say that the universe (i.e., the total of that which exists) is a creation, you need to argue that existence is an effect. But of course this is incoherent, for reasons explained above.

Van Til: I might point to the wonderful structure of the eye as evidence of God's purpose in nature.

Thorn: I would point to the chain of evolution from the most primitive insect eye to the acuity of an eagle's eye as evidence of the glory of existence.

Van Til: I might call in the story of mankind through the past to show that it has been directed and controlled by God.

Thorn: You would simply be begging the question in order to cover your stolen concepts, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: All these evidences would leave you unaffected.

Thorn: That's rationality: the commitment to reason as my sole means of knowledge.

Van Til: You would simply say that however else we may explain reality, we cannot bring in God.

Thorn: No, not precisely. I say that however you want to explain reality, I will not accept it if it is not rational. That rules out your god-belief, plus a lot of other nonsense.

Van Til: Cause and purpose, you keep repeating, are words that we human beings use with respect to things around us because they seem to act as we ourselves act, but that is as far as we can go.

Thorn: The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. It states that an entity will act only according to its nature. The concept 'purpose' has a biological basis. Harry Binswanger defends this thesis in his book The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts. [1] Objectivism triumphantly rescues these concepts from the greedy clutches of the mystics and returns them to a rational philosophical context.

Van Til: And when the evidence for Christianity proper is presented to you the procedure is the same. If I point out to you that the prophecies of Scripture have been fulfilled, you will simply reply that it quite naturally appears that way to me and to others, but that in reality it is not possible for any mind to predict the future from the past. If it were, all would again be fixed and history would be without newness and freedom.

Thorn: Something along those lines, however, even the counter-argument you project here would be rather weak. The notion of prophecy is yet another expression of the primacy of consciousness metaphysics. We are justified in discarding it because of this vice alone. Besides, when you look at the Bible and understand that its authors practiced the ancient literary tradition of midrash, it becomes clear that many of the tropes and motifs found in earlier books were recycled in new guises and context in later texts, thus appearing to constitute a "fulfillment" of a "prophecy." In other cases, such as in portions of the book of Daniel, the passages which are purported to be a "prophecy" were clearly written after the fact. Many studies have shown this. The appeal to prophecy to prove the existence of a god is yet another question-begging evasion, Dr. Van Til. I would have hoped you would be above this, given the praise your students and followers have sung about you.

Van Til: Then if I point to the many miracles, the story is once more the same.

Thorn: Does this disappoint you, Dr. Van Til? Aren't you just disappointed that I am not willing to surrender my mind to your god-belief?

Van Til: To illustrate this point I quote from the late Dr. William Adams Brown, an outstanding modernist theologian. "Take any of the miracles of the past," says Brown, "The virgin birth, the raising of Lazarus, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Suppose that you can prove that these events happened just as they are claimed to have happened. What have you accomplished? You have shown that our previous view of the limits of the possible needs to be enlarged; that our former generalizations were too narrow and need revision; that problems cluster about the origin of life and its renewal of which we had hitherto been unaware. But the one thing which you have not shown, which indeed you cannot show, is that a miracle has happened; for that is to confess that these problems are inherently insoluble, which cannot be determined until all possible tests have been made" (God at Work, New York, 1933, p. 169). You see with what confidence Brown uses this weapon of logical impossibility against the idea of a miracle. Many of the older critics of Scripture challenged the evidence for miracle at this point or at that.

Thorn: Dr. Van Til, what would be your argument that claims about miracles in the past are true? What would you consider to be evidence or proof of the claim that a man was born of a virgin circa first century Palestine? Why would it be on the shoulders of those who do not believe that? If it is your claim that these miracle claims are true, then it seems the onus rests on your shoulders to make a case for them, that is, if you want me to believe. If you do not attempt to make a case for miracles, then don't complain when I don't believe them. And if you do present an argument and it does not convince me, then let it go. I mean really, Dr. Van Til!

Van Til: They made as it were a slow, piece-meal land invasion of the island of Christianity.

Thorn: I prefer a more direct and effective route, which is pointing out how all of Christianity rests on a false view of reality. This is much more effective than getting caught up in arguments about the supposed validity of miracles. The claims about miracles can be put to rest at the same time that the notion of providence, prophecy and creation can be put to rest. It's quite simple, and Dr. Van Til, as a presuppositionalist, you should welcome my route. It consists essentially of naming your starting point and identifying the means by which you know it is true. My starting point is the fact that existence exists and I know it is true by means of sensory perception. I argue that to reject my starting point, you have to assume it, and to attempt to assert something prior to it, you have to steal it. Game, set and match, Dr. Van Til. You're done.

Van Til: Brown, on the other hand, settles the matter at once by a host of stukas from the sky. Any pill boxes that he cannot destroy immediately, he will mop up later. He wants to get rapid control of the whole field first. And this he does by directly applying the law of non-contradiction. Only that is possible, says Brown, in effect, which I can show to be logically related according to my laws of logic.

Thorn: Yes, I understand what Brown considers to be the virtues of his tactics. And to be sure, they're not indefensible. But I understand that a presuppositionalist, taking your cue, will attempt to undermine Brown's argument by asking him to "account for" the laws of logic on which his argument depends. It's quite odd, however, that presuppositionalists want to go around and around on this issue, for even presuppositionalists do not contest (at least openly) the validity of the laws of logic. So they attempt to focus the debate on the non-believers presumed (presupposed?) inability to "account for" the laws of logic, while ignoring the implications of the laws of logic on the doctrine of miracles. It's almost as if it is assumed on the part of the presuppositionalist that, if he can show that the laws of logic are successfully shown to have their basis in the triune God of the Bible, then they cannot be used to criticize the doctrines of Christianity. But this of course would mark the presuppositionalist as a suspicious character, for why would he fear, if he thinks Christianity is so logical, to allow logic to be applied in a critical review of Christianity's colorful interior? Will the laws of logic suddenly change their shape after the presuppositionalist makes his case for their being grounded in the biblical deity such that a talking snake, a burning bush which speaks, a man living in the belly of a fish for three days, three men surviving a trek through a raging furnace, corpses rising from their graves and a virgin-born resurrected god-man are all suddenly deemed to be logical? Are you mad, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: So then if miracles want to have scientific standing, that is be recognized as genuine facts, they must sue for admittance at the port of entry to the mainland of scientific endeavor. And admission will be given as soon as they submit to the little process of generalization which deprives them of their uniqueness. Miracles must take out naturalization papers if they wish to vote in the republic of science and have any influence there.

Thorn: I would not grant even this, Dr. Van Til. The notion of miracles is an expression of the primacy of consciousness. This bars them from admittance into the realm of rationality forever and for good. There is no way to rescue it.

Van Til: Take now the four points I have mentioned -- creation, providence, prophecy, and miracle. Together they represent the whole of Christian theism.

Thorn: Then the whole of Christianity is irrational, Dr. Van Til. It is silly of you to try to defend it.

Van Til: Together they include what is involved in the idea of God and what He has done round about and for us. Many times over and in many ways the evidence for all these has been presented.

Thorn: Yes, the constant piping in that there is evidence and that it has been shown "many times over." That's just the point, Dr. Van Til. On the primacy of consciousness view of reality, anything can be considered to be evidence of the arbitrary. That's all part of the seduction of metaphysical subjectivism. If you want to accept it, you will make it attractive to you.

Van Til: But you have an always available and effective answer at hand. It is impossible! It is impossible! You act like a postmaster who has received a great many letters addressed in foreign languages. He says he will deliver them as soon as they are addressed in the King's English by the people who sent them. Till then they must wait in the dead letter department.

Thorn: Are you complaining here?

Van Til: Basic to all the objections the average philosopher and scientist raises against the evidence for the existence of God is the assertion or the assumption that to accept such evidence would be to break the rules of logic.

Thorn: "Basic to all the objections" launched by "the average philosopher"? Well, I don't know if I'm much of a philosopher, Dr. Van Til, but who likes to think of himself as average? I do not argue so much that your god-belief violates the rules of logic per se, as much as I simply point out that the very foundations of god-belief as such, namely the primacy of consciousness view of reality, make the laws of logic impossible by undermining their fundamental basis, which is the primacy of existence principle. You cannot enlist subjectivism to fulfill a task which only objectivity can fulfill. That is the essence of the argument from existence. It points out that god-belief has a basis which is incompatible with a proper view of reality, and thus incompatible with reason, logic, morality, indeed human life as such.

Van Til: I see you are yawning. Let us stop to eat supper now.

Thorn: Oh finally! My appetite has been growing for the last two hours! Yes, let's eat!

Van Til: For there is one more point in this connection that I must make. You have no doubt at some time in your life been to a dentist. A dentist drills a little deeper and then a little deeper and at last comes to the nerve of the matter.

Thorn: Yes, sure I have. Is it your aim to make me feel uncomfortable, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: Now before I drill into the nerve of the matter, I must again make apologies.

Thorn: Okay, go right ahead, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: The fact that so many people are placed before a full exposition of the evidence for God's existence and yet do not believe in Him has greatly discouraged us.

Thorn: Doesn't that tell you something?

Van Til: We have therefore adopted measures of despair. Anxious to win your good will, we have again compromised our God.

Thorn: Question for you, Dr. Van Til: why is it so important to you that others believe what you believe? Why do you want to convince others so badly?

Van Til: Noting the fact that men do not see, we have conceded that what they ought to see is hard to see.

Thorn: Have you considered that there's really no there there after all, Dr. Van Til? Some believers, for instance, have come to terms with this by recognizing the fact that their chains were being pulled all along. Stories like those of Dan Barker and Farrell Till, for instance, successful evangelists who finally admitted to themselves that it was all a sham after all. But you won't admit this, will you, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling.

Thorn: And the fact that such treatments lead only to at best probabilities, assuming one accepts your premises, sort of ticks you off, doesn't it, Dr. Van Til? You don't want men to think, "Well, gosh, man, maybe that's true…" That's not enough. You want to compel men to come into the fold. You essentially want the power of force. Right?

Van Til: 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.

Thorn: What did I say? You don't want to reach men by means of reason, do you? You'd rather enjoy the freedom of slapping shackles on their wrists and dragging them to the altar of torture and extract confessions, just like the Inquisitors did. So, in order to replicate this act of force on the psychological level to whatever degree possible, you have devised this "transcendental argument" which is actually not an argument at all. Instead, it's a burden-shifting device. It calls itself an argument for the existence of God, but it consists entirely of goading the non-Christian into defending his non-belief in ways that are unrealistic. To accomplish this subterfuge, you rely heavily on ill-defined terms such as "account for." One of your followers says explicitly that "account is logical proof." [2] But then you go and ask the non-Christian to "give an account for" things which are not in the realm of proof, such as the uniformity of nature. You know perfectly well, Dr. Van Til, that proof as such depends on the assumption of nature's general uniformity. So to challenge the non-Christian to "account for" the uniformity of nature, for instance, is to invite the believer to commit a fallacy. Thus, if the non-Christian attempts to meet this challenge and tries to give an "account for" the uniformity of nature, you have all the options: either point out that it begs the question (since, as a proof, it assumes the truth of what's supposed to be proved), or tell him that his explanation is insufficient to the task (since it does not fit your preconceived notions of what satisfies the challenge, namely an appeal to an invisible magic being). Dr. Van Til, I'm not saying you haven't done your homework. What I'm saying is that you haven't been honest, and you haven't trained your students to be honest, either. This is clearly a ruse, and most non-Christians at least sense this, if they haven't identified the error explicitly. The only rational (i.e., reality-based) solution is simply to recognize that the uniformity of nature on which logical argument depends is a corollary of the axioms; that nature is uniform is implicit in every act of perception, since to perceive an object is to perceive an object. In other words, existence exists, and existence is identity. Once this is recognized and understood, your "transcendental argument" disintegrates into the sham it really is. Besides, it's hard to fail to see the non sequitur of your argument: even if the non-Christian cannot explain the uniformity of nature, it does not follow from this that a god exists, let alone your god, Dr. Van Til. I'm mean, really!

Van Til: And so we fall back upon testimony instead of argument.

Thorn: I think that's a better choice, Dr. Van Til, for apologists have repeatedly shown their tendency towards utterly dishonest tactics in their debating strategies. Besides, the arguments which apologists parade before non-Christians are typically not the reasons why the apologists themselves first began believing what they claim to believe. They rehearsed themselves on these arguments long after their conversion in order to reinforce their faith and to rationalize their beliefs, to protect them from reason, not to conform them to reason. When you present your personal testimony, and explain how it is that you really did come to accepting your god-belief, we find that the initial reason behind your religious views is really quite quaint, like a frightened child in a hay-barn at night imagining malevolent ghosts coming to do him mischief. Sound familiar, Dr. Van Til? Your god-belief is not born on reason, as you would like others to think. It is born completely out of uninformed fears. You yourself admit that there was no reason after all to be afraid on that occasion in the hay-barn, but the decision you made at the height of that fear compelled you dramatically regardless of the flimsy context of the event. You yourself were not compelled to believe because someone presented a convincing argument for the supposed truth of Christian theism; rather, you were raised in it. You admit that you were raised in an environment of influences which continually conditioned your mind to believe these things. Even a good argument would not duplicate this effect, Dr. Van Til, and the argument which you have come up with - far from being even a mediocre argument at that - can only be effective on the terminally confused as it is. So, I think it is probably better to stick with the personal testimony strategy, Dr. For one, it is far more honest: it tells non-Christians why you believe, and ignores all the sophisticated tactics you've devised to convince yourself after the fact. And for another, it reveals to the non-Christian just how stupid your god-belief really is: it is borne of emotion-based decision-making which occurred at a time in one's life when he was philosophically naïve and deeply impressionable, as a fragile-minded child who won't dare question anything he's not supposed to. Even the New Testament openly considers this to be the ideal mindset of the believer.

Van Til: After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts.

Thorn: If that is the party line which you insist on following, Dr. Van Til, then you admit that there's no proof after all and that your god-belief is simply an affair of the imagination. But you do not want to admit this, so you try to have it both ways. You want to say you have arguments, but then you want to say that "God is not found at the end of an argument." Meanwhile, you nowhere show your god-belief to be valid. That's fine, Dr. Van Til, until you want to come along and tell others that they should believe. Once you do this, you should be willing to present an honest argument. People are expecting you to deal with them honestly, not hoodwink them, as your presuppositional strategy is geared towards doing. In fact, not being one for dishonesty in interpersonal tactics myself, I don't think I could conceive of anything more devious than your "transcendental argument," Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, that once we were blind and that now we see, and give up all intellectual argument.

Thorn: Yes, with metaphors such as that, I don't know how intellectual an argument could hope to become. Other terms which you will inject into your arguments, such as "god," "supernatural," "transcendental," "creation," etc., all turn out to be anti-concepts, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: Do you suppose that our God approves of this attitude of His followers?

Thorn: Well, since I don't think there is a god, I don't think the question is valid, Dr. Van Til.

Van Til: I do not think so. The God who claims to have made all facts and to have placed His stamp upon them will not grant that there is really some excuse for those who refuse to see.

Thorn: And those who want to control others will invent such absurd notions to undercut their minds.

Van Til: Besides, such a procedure is self-defeating. If someone in your home town of Washington denied that there was any such thing as a United States Government would you take him some distance down the Potomac and testify to him that there is?

Thorn: I've learned not to bother trying to convince people of something so obvious when it is so clear that they have rejected reason. That is why I do not try to convince theists that their god-belief is irrational, because I know they will choose not to see this truth.

Van Til: So your experience and testimony of regeneration would be meaningless except for the objective truth of the objective facts that are presupposed by it.

Thorn: But this supposed regeneration is based on emotional premises. You have allowed your emotions to guide you, not your reason, so your claim to "the objective truth of the objective facts that are presupposed" by his god-belief is unfounded. You essentially hold that reality was created by a consciousness. You can't get any more subjective than this! You cannot overturn this fact, Dr. Van Til, so long as you remain committed to your god-belief.

Van Til: 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.

Thorn: How do you figure? Do you think that all arguments are arguments from personal considerations? If one presents the argument that the world's best diamonds come from mines located in South Africa, would you say that he's giving a personal testimony? He may have never been to South Africa or even seen the diamonds firsthand, but he could still present such an argument.

Van Til: Waiving all this for the moment, let us see what the modern psychologist of religion, who stands on the same foundation with the philosopher, will do to our testimony. He makes a distinction between the raw datum and its cause, giving me the raw datum and keeping for himself the explanation of the cause. Professor James H. Leuba, a great psychologist of Bryn Mawr, has a procedure that is typical. He says, "The reality of any given datum -- of an immediate experience in the sense in which the term is used here, may not be impugned: When I feel cold or warm, sad or gay, discouraged or confident, I am cold, sad, discouraged, etc., and every argument which might be advanced to prove to me that I am not cold is, in the nature of the case, preposterous; an immediate experience may not be controverted; it cannot be wrong." All this seems on the surface to be very encouraging. The immigrant is hopeful of a ready and speedy admittance. However, Ellis Island must still be passed. "But if the raw data of experience are not subject to criticism, the causes ascribed to them are. If I say that my feeling of cold is due to an open window, or my state of exultation to a drug, or my renewed courage to God, my affirmation goes beyond my immediate experience; I have ascribed a cause to it, and that cause may be the right or the wrong one." (God or Man, New York, 1933, p. 243.) And thus the immigrant must wait at Ellis Island a million years.

Thorn: Well, fortunately for you, Dr. Van Til, American immigration policy does not prohibit religious persons from entering the Union. And that's perfectly fine with me. But I understand the use of your analogue here, so I will try to work with it. Dr. Leuba is correct in recognizing the fact that both sensations and emotions have a causal nature in that they are caused by certain phenomena acting in some way. He is also correct in pointing out that we do not always correctly identify the cause of our sensations and emotions; we can be wrong. He is also right when he says that this act of identifying the cause of our sensations and emotions "goes beyond [one's] immediate experience"; I take this to imply the fact that identification of causal connections is a conceptual process, since it relies on concept-formation. For instance, if I feel pain on my finger, I could attribute the cause to the birds which I see outside my window, or I could attribute it to the candle flame which I just touched. But either way, even if I am mistaken in identifying the cause of the sensation, I am still acting on the assumption that it must have some cause.

The same is the case with our emotions, Dr. Van Til. Our emotions have a causal nature in that they are caused by some phenomenon acting in a certain way. This phenomenon is the introduction of new knowledge as measured against our values. For instance, if I get a phone call from a woman whose voice I do not recognize, and she announces that she is a nurse at a local hospital and she tells me that my mother has been brought into the emergency room because she's been in an auto accident (new knowledge), my emotions naturally react according to my values. The new knowledge tells me that one of my values is threatened, so of course I am worried to a panic and urge the nurse to tell me more. The nurse then says that my mother's fine and wants me to come pick her up. This again is yet more new knowledge, and it tells me that my value is not seriously threatened, so I am relieved and my panic subsides. We cycle through this process everyday of our life, and often forget to realize that our emotions are not a mode of cognition, but a mode of reacting to our cognition.

Believers have told me that they have had intensely emotional experiences which resulted in their commitment to religious convictions. While I would not contend their claim to have had intense emotional experiences - this does not conflict with the fundamentals - I would question their intellectual sobriety if they claim that the causation of their emotional experiences was divine in nature. How could one know that the cause of their feelings is divine in nature? How would be able to confirm the claim that it was an invisible magic being which caused his emotional exuberance? How would one be able to attribute the cause of his spikes in emotional experiences to the Christian God as opposed to Islam's Allah, or to Blarko the WonderBeing? It's clear to me that someone attributing the cause of his emotions to a deity has misunderstood the nature of his emotions and is treating his emotions as if they were a faculty of validating knowledge rather than responding to the introduction of it.

Van Til: That is to say, I as a believer in God through Christ, assert that I am born again through the Holy Spirit. The Psychologist says that is a raw datum of experience and as such incontrovertible. We do not, he says, deny it.

Thorn: In other words, Dr. Leuba is saying that he does not deny the fact that you've had an emotional experience, for instance. Is that right, Dr. Van Til?

Van Til: But it means nothing to us. If you want it to mean something to us you must ascribe a cause to your experience.

Thorn: Well, after all, that's pretty basic. You've had an emotional experience, but now you must identify what caused it. Remember the fear of ghosts you had in that hay-barn when you were a wee lad, Dr. Van Til? That made quite an impact on you, didn't it?

Van Til: We shall then examine the cause. Was your experience caused by opium or God? You say by God. Well, that is impossible since as philosophers we have shown that it is logically contradictory to believe in God. You may come back at any time when you have changed your mind about the cause of your regeneration. We shall be glad to have you and welcome you as a citizen of our realm, if only you take out your naturalization papers!

Thorn: Are you complaining again, Dr. Van Til?