Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Response to Jeff Durbin's "The Irrefutable Proof of God"



I'm in a FaceBook theists/atheist group and someone posted this Jeff Durbin video. He is their pastor and they think highly of him.

Now, just to be clear, this is not irrefutable proof of god - I was expecting more, but I got a a detailed description from a presuppositional apologetics point of view.

If you don't know what that is, it goes like this. Without God, you can't know anything. He is the basis for logic, induction and reason in general. If you're coming at life with an atheistic, naturalistic world view, then what do you have for a foundation of logic? Induction is simply the view that the world will continue to behave as it has behaved in the past. Why does it do that? What reason do you have for that with a naturalistic, materialistic point of view. You don't. So, your view doesn't make any sense.

I don't quite know who is convinced by these kinds of arguments. Say we discover a new planet. It's orbiting a star 50 light years from here. What is the planet made of? I have a theory that it's made of green cheese. The green cheese theory makes sense. Without it, you don't know what the planet is made of, and don't you want certainty? So, you should believe in the green cheese theory. Not convinced? I know how you feel. I felt that way through the entire video.

Durbin is right and I don't know why I can trust in induction. People have been trusting in induction much longer than either Judaism or Christianity were around. They had their own gods who made it make sense to them, but they are now dismissed as silly superstition. The current Christian god is, of course, different, and the bible says we are made in His image and he is logical and that makes us logical etc.. etc... But yes, I don't know. I am comfortable saying that I don't know lots of things, like the basis for beauty, morality, or logic, or induction and so on. I have theories, but I don't have certainty like he does. I don't consider this a bad thing.

I guess I can see people who want to make sense of the world, who are scared of not knowing, fall into his way of thinking. Of course, certainty FEELS better than uncertainty, but sometimes, reality isn't comfortable.

The facts are: there is either a God or there isn't. If there isn't, then not having a basis for morality or beauty or logic are simply consequences of reality. Boo hoo if we don't have a basis. This, in no way, makes his worldview superior to mine, just that he has certainty, not that he is correct. Like the green cheese theory, it's either correct or it isn't. If I'm certain of the green cheese theory, what does that say?