Tough Questions Answered

How Can Two Witnesses See the Same Event Differently? Part 1

Bill Pratt — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:00:10 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In a previous post, we saw that the state of California explicitly instructs jurors not to disregard eyewitness testimony that seems to be inconsistent with other testimony. But how exactly can two witnesses see the same event and describe it differently?

J. Warner Wallace was a detective for many years and had to dig through divergent eyewitness accounts frequently. In his book, Cold-Case Christianity, he recalls one particular robbery where he received seemingly conflicting reports from two witnesses.

Many years ago I investigated a robbery in which a male suspect entered a small grocery store, walked up to the counter, and calmly contacted the cashier. The suspect removed a handgun from his waistband and placed it on the counter. He pointed it at the cashier, using his right hand to hold the gun on the counter, his finger on the trigger. The suspect quietly told the cashier to empty the register of its money and place it in a plastic bag. The cashier complied and gave the robber all the money in the drawer. The robber then calmly walked from the store.

This robbery was observed by two witnesses, who were properly separated and interviewed apart from one another. When the crime report was assigned to me as the investigator, I read the officer’s summary and wondered if the witnesses were describing the same robber.

One witness, named Sylvia Ramos, was a 38-year old interior designer. She was married with kids and picking up milk on the way home from work. Her description of the robbery suspect was as follows: younger boy in his teens, very polite with sweet voice, did not have a gun, bought something at the store, wore an Izod polo shirt, had no vehicle.

Another witness, named Paul Meher, was a 23-year old apprentice plumber. He was single with no kids, and visiting the cashier on his day off. His description of the suspect was as follows: man about 24-25 years old, threatening scowl, had a Ruger P95 9mm handgun, bought nothing at the store, might have worn a t-shirt, ran to a 90′s tan Nissan.

Wallace continues his account of the investigation:

At first, these statements seemed to describe two different men committing two different crimes. But, the more I spoke with the witnesses, the more I realized that both were reliable in spite of the fact they seemed to be saying different things about the suspect.

Sylvia Ramos was hurrying home from work and stopped at the store to purchase some milk and a few small items. She stood in line behind the suspect as he calmly committed the robbery. While she heard the tone of his voice, she never heard his words distinctly, and she never saw a gun. She described him as a polite young man in his teens. Based on the way the cashier handed the robber the bag, Sylvia believed that the robber made a purchase prior to committing the crime. Sylvia immediately recognized the suspect’s blue shirt as a classic IZOD polo because many of the men in her office wore this style of shirt when she first started her career as a designer. In fact, she had recently purchased one for her husband. Sylvia watched the robber walk slowly out of the business and across the parking lot as he left the area. She was sure that he didn’t have a “getaway” car.

We will see how Paul Meher viewed events in part 2.

Online Conference July 6-7: Is Christianity Actually True? Why?

Bill Pratt — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:00:40 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Exciting news! On July 6-7, there will be an online conference where 9 speakers will present why they believe Christianity is true. I have been invited to speak on July 6 along with Ed Dingess, Phil Fernandes, Jason Lisle, Paul Copan, and Matt Flannagan. On July 7, the speakers are Frank Turek, Douglas Groothuis, and Mary Jo Sharp. The host for both days will be Andre Immelman of the C. S. Lewis Society of South Africa.

If you are interested in attending this conference, or even hosting a group of friends for the conference, please click on this link. And spread the word!

Do Discrepancies in Eyewitness Testimony Render All of It Unreliable?

Bill Pratt — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:00:22 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

If there is one thing I have heard dozens of times from skeptics, it is that eyewitness testimony cannot be trusted. Skeptics constantly point this out to me. Why? Because this is the the best way, in their estimation, to discredit the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s life recorded in the New Testament.

My response has always been, from common sense, that some eyewitness testimony is better than other eyewitness testimony. One cannot sweep aside all of it, as we rely on this kind of testimony every day of our lives. We literally could not function if we did not believe anything that other people told us about what they witnessed.

Many skeptics, however, don’t go so far as to impugn all eyewitness testimony from ancient history. Their problem with the NT accounts of Jesus’s life is the apparent inconsistencies and divergences among the sources. One Gospel says that two angels were at Jesus’s tomb and another Gospel says that one angel was at Jesus’s tomb. Based on these kinds of discrepancies, skeptics claim that all, or nearly all, of the testimony in the NT should be thrown out.

Is this position reasonable? Do discrepancies rule out the reliability of testimony? Recently I ran across some actual legal language about eyewitness testimony which applies to court proceedings in the state of California. This language was cited by J. Warner Wallace in his book Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. Here it is:

Do not automatically reject testimony just because of inconsistencies or conflicts. Consider whether the differences are important or not. People sometimes honestly forget things or make mistakes about what they remember. Also, two people may witness the same event yet see or hear it differently. (Section 105, Judicial Council of California Criminal Jury Instructions, 2006).

According to Wallace, “Jurors are instructed to be cautious not to automatically disqualify a witness just because some part of his or her statement may disagree with an additional piece of evidence or testimony.”

Skeptics, then, are being unreasonable when they demand that there be no apparent inconsistencies within the Gospel accounts. This standard is not ever applied in California law courts (and I suspect courts in other states), where matters of life and death are decided. What a reasonable person should do, when reading the Gospels, is set aside the apparent discrepancies and look at the areas where the witnesses agree.

Why Is Morality Ultimately Relational?

Bill Pratt — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:00:27 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Can a person be moral without knowing God? Yes, but this kind of moral life is stunted and incomplete. It is only through relationship with God that the moral life flowers. Once again, I must quote from David Baggett and Jerry Walls’ brilliant work, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality.

If God is the source and root of morality—in any fashion close to the way that we have depicted it here—then the tug of morality within us is less like a cold deliverance of reason, and more like a warm and personal invitation to come and partake, to drink from a brook whose water quenches our thirst in the most deeply satisfying way we can imagine.

The voice of morality is the call of God to return to our only true and ultimate source of happiness. It’s not an overactive superego or a societally imposed joy-killing curfew, but an intimation of the eternal, a personal overture to run with rather than against the grain of the universe. It’s a confirmation of our suspicions that love and relationship have not just happened to bubble up to the top of the evolutionary chain, reflecting nothing, but rather that they penetrate to the very foundation of all that is real.

Reason and relationship, rationality and relationality, go hand in hand, and they weren’t merely the culmination of the elaborate process that enabled us to reflect about it all and inquire into the meaning of life; no, they were what began it all and imbued the process with meaning right from the start.

How does our relationship with God make us more virtuous?

Virtue itself is relational. Experience reveals that we grow to become like those with whom we fraternize. Relationship with God is what makes us more like him; intimacy with Christ makes us fully human. By hiding his words in our heart we become better able to resist sin; by yielding to his will we walk uprightly; by allowing the power of the Holy Spirit to animate us, we find deliverance from the bondage to sin.

Virtue, to our thinking, is not just a set of dispositional qualities; it’s a function of ongoing relationship. Intimacy with God is what engenders holiness of heart. Trust in his faithfulness and goodness manifests itself in a holy life. Morality, ultimately, for the Christian, is all about relationship, first and foremost with God, and then secondarily with others. All the law and the prophets, Jesus assured us, hang on these two commandments: To love God with all of our hearts, souls, and minds, and our neighbor as ourselves.

Yes, we can be virtuous without knowing God, but it is of a secondary quality. The path to true virtue is through relationship with Jesus Christ.

What Explains the Existence of Objective Evil?

Bill Pratt — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:00:49 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Objective evil exists. When we observe the world around us, we realize that there are many things about the world that should not be, things that are wrong. When we see a child abused, we immediately know that it is evil; we know it is wrong, that it should not be. When we see thousands die in an earthquake, we know this should not be. We know it is wrong. There is no doubt that there is evil in the world, that there are things that should not be.

So, any worldview which claims to explain all of reality had better have a good explanation of how this could be true.

How does atheistic naturalism explain the existence of evil? Naturalists must look to evolutionary biology to explain why humans believe there is evil in the world. They reason that evolution has caused human beings to have negative feelings or emotions about certain aspects of the world because those negative emotions have somehow helped the human species to survive in the past. We feel badly about children being tortured because our genes are programmed by millions of years of natural selection to make us feel that way.

Notice that naturalism can say nothing about whether torturing children is really and ultimately wrong, or that thousands of people dying in an earthquake is really wrong. Why? Because for something to be ultimately wrong, there must exist a standard of what is ultimately right, a standard that tells us what the world should be like. In other words, evil presupposes that the world has purpose.

On naturalism, the world just is the way it is. The world has come to exist in its present state by the operation of physical forces and sheer chance. There is no ultimate purpose to the world, and thus there is no way that the world should be.

Evil reduces to each person’s feelings about what they don’t like, which is determined by evolutionary biology and our environment. Naturalists believe that statements like, “It is wrong to torture children” really mean nothing more than “I have negative feelings when children are tortured.”

Christian theists, on the other hand, recognize that there is an ultimate purpose to the world, that there is a way the world should be. Purpose for the world is given by the mind of God. God tells us through his words in the Bible and through the natural world he created, what his purposes are.

Christians know that torturing children is really and ultimately wrong because we know that God did not create children for the purpose of them being tortured. Children were created so that they could be loved and come to know God.

We also know that in God’s original creation, human beings were not supposed to die in earthquakes. That was not his purpose for human beings. So when people die in earthquakes, we can confidently say that those deaths are wrong, that they are evil, that they should not be.

Christian theism makes sense of the fact that objective evil really exists in the world. Atheistic naturalism does not.

What Explains the Laws of Logic and Mathematics?

Bill Pratt — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:00:05 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

The laws of thought and mathematics are absolutely true. The law of non-contradiction, the law of identity, and the law of the excluded middle – the three fundamental principles of thought, otherwise known as the laws of logic – are all undeniable. To deny them is to assume they are true.

They are true regardless of time, place, or who is thinking about them. There is no possible world where they could not be true. Likewise with mathematics. 2+3=5, and this is true regardless of time, place, or who is thinking about it. There is no possible world where 2+3 does not equal 5.

So, any worldview which claims to explain all of reality had better have a good explanation of how this could be true.

How does atheistic naturalism explain the laws of thought and mathematics? Since everything, on naturalism, must be reduced to physical matter, an explanation for the laws of thought and mathematics will be hard to come by, for these laws are clearly not made out of matter.

Naturalists take a couple different routes. First, some of them say that there is no explanation for these laws; they just exist and that’s it; they are brute facts of the universe. But surely these laws that transcend time, space, and matter, that existed before humans ever came on the scene, and will still exist after humans are extinct, are uncomfortable bedfellows with electrons, skin cells, and hydrogen atoms – the things of physical science.

How will the scientific methods of physics, chemistry, and biology explain the laws of thought and mathematics when they are built on them and rely on them? It’s like trying to explain the cinder block foundation of a house by appealing to a second-story window.

A second explanation is the following: some naturalists deny that these laws actually transcend time, space, and matter. They claim that these are merely human conventions, laws that human beings have simply invented. But this claim seems incredible. Are we to really accept that 2+3 does not equal 5 unless human beings say it does?

I feel quite confident that even Klingons would agree that 2+3=5. Can you imagine there being any dispute between a human and a Klingon over math? Of course not. The idea is absurd. This explanation just won’t fly because these laws are absolute; it doesn’t matter one bit whether any one of us ever discovered these laws, as they would still be true. You can’t imagine a time or place where these laws aren’t true.

How does Christian theism explain the laws of thought and mathematics? Instead of denying that these laws are transcendent, Christian theism affirms our basic intuitions that they are. Christians identify the source of the laws of thought and mathematics with God, who is timeless, spaceless, and has always existed.

These laws are a part of God’s eternally existent nature. They are built into God, in a matter of speaking. So Christian theism not only provides an explanation for these laws, it also provides an explanation that makes sense of the absolute and transcendent nature of these laws. They have always existed because God has always existed.

What Explains My Enduring Self?

Bill Pratt — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:00:04 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

I exist. I cannot deny that I exist without first existing. In addition, I seem to be a single, enduring self who has existed throughout my entire life. My past memories belong to my same identical self. I fully expect my same identical self to exist tomorrow and next week, assuming I don’t die. Not only do I think these things about myself, but I wager that everyone on the planet, excepting maybe those with severe mental illness, feels the same way.

Any worldview worth believing in should have an explanation for the existence of an enduring self. Let’s look at how atheistic naturalism and Christian theism explain the enduring self.

So how does atheistic naturalism explain the existence of my single, enduring self? Honestly, it can’t. Recall that naturalism explains everything in terms of matter – what physics, chemistry, and biology can describe. According to these disciplines, each moment I lose hundreds of thousands of cells and other microscopic parts.

Every 7 to 10 years, most of my cells are entirely replaced. Put another way, the average age of all the cells in the adult human body is 7 to 10 years. So, according to naturalism, I am virtually a new individual every 7-10 years. Any sense I have of an enduring self that is the same through my entire life is an illusion, a trick of the human brain.

I may resemble the self I was last week, but I am not the very same self, for my body and my brain have lost parts and gained new parts. Likewise, I will not be the same person next week or next month or next year. In fact, in roughly 10 years, I will have very few physical parts in common with my current self. On atheistic naturalism, there is no enduring self.

What about Christian theism? This worldview posits each individual self as an enduring, immaterial, soul. This soul persists from the moment of conception through death. The reason we believe our memories of the past belong to us, and not some other self, is because our memories are unified by our single, enduring soul.

My exact same soul will endure next week and next month and next year. I will exist in the future, not somebody else. My physical body can be constantly changing, but my soul can persist unchanged. The immaterial, unchanging soul of each human being explains why we believe we all think that our past, present and future selves, are one and the same, and not a series of distinct individuals.

What explains the existence of an enduring self? Certainly not atheistic naturalism. Only something like the immaterial soul offered by Christian theism can explain it.

What Explains the Existence of the Physical Universe?

Bill Pratt — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:00:27 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that the physical universe exists. I think we can safely ignore anyone who believes that the universe is just an illusion or that we are in the “matrix.”

But if the universe exists, what explains it? Why does it exist? Any worldview worth considering needs an answer to this question. Let’s look at how Christian theism and atheistic naturalism attempt to answer this question and see which worldview offers a better explanation.

Atheistic naturalism has commonly offered a few responses to this question, all of which I believe are unsatisfactory. First, some naturalists will answer that the question itself is meaningless. They say that it is a nonsense question that has no answer. The universe just is and there is no explanation for it. As an explanation, however, this is no explanation at all. Everyone but the naturalist seems to know what the question means, so we can safely assume the naturalist simply doesn’t want to answer the question because their worldview has no answer.

Second, naturalists have answered that the universe is self-existent, and that it has always existed. The problem with this explanation is that is has been soundly refuted by modern cosmology, by one of the very sciences that naturalists claim to be the arbiters of reality. There is also a philosophical problem with this explanation. Every physical object we observe in the universe is caused to exist by something else, so how can it be that the whole universe can be uncaused if everything in it is caused?

Here is an analogy. Let’s say you see a perfectly smooth, 1-foot diameter, glass globe sitting in the grass. You would conclude, without much thought, that something or someone caused that glass ball to come into existence. Now take that glass ball, blow it up, and make it the size of Jupiter. The Jupiter-sized glass ball still needs a cause, doesn’t it?

Now make the glass ball the size of the observable universe. Wouldn’t you agree that the universe-size glass ball even more obviously needs a cause than the 1-foot ball or the Jupiter-sized ball? Likewise, to say that even though everything smaller than the universe needs a cause, but the universe doesn’t need a cause, is simply implausible.

A third explanation is that our universe is merely one of an infinite sea of universes that exist.

How is this an answer that naturalists can offer? Naturalists claim that only what the physical sciences can observe and describe constitutes reality. But no universe except our own has ever been observed. In addition, even if there were an infinite sea of universes, the question of what caused all those universes needs to be answered. Instead of offering a cause of our one universe, the naturalist has multiplied by infinity the number of effects that need a cause, and thus makes the problem infinitely worse.

What is the answer from Christian theism? Christians answer that the universe exists because a self-existent first cause (God) has brought it into existence and is continuing to hold it in existence. Why is this a better explanation than what atheistic naturalists offer?

It seems obvious that physical objects in the universe need a cause to bring them into existence. A thing cannot cause its own existence. But, in order to avoid an infinite regress of causes, we need a first, uncaused cause.

Here is an analogy from movement. We can say that a stone is moved by a stick, which is moved by a hand, which is moved by an arm, which is moved by a brain, and so forth and so on. But eventually the explanations have to stop at something that is not in need of being moved. We need an unmoved mover, and that is God.

Christians recognize that the universe simply cannot be the cause of itself. The cause must transcend the universe and it must be able to exist on its own, with no need of an outside cause for its own existence. This cause we call God.

Will Morality Always Be Expressed as Rights and Duties?

Bill Pratt — Wed, 29 May 2013 13:00:22 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

It certainly seems that our moral and political discourse these days is always talking about rights and duties. Gay people want the right to marry. We tell people it is their duty to pay their taxes. These words seem to dominate the conversation.

George Mavrodes sees a day in the future when all of this talk of rights and duties will fade away. Morality will become something more beautiful.

I come more and more to think that morality, while a fact, is a twisted and distorted fact. Or perhaps better, that it is a barely recognizable version of another fact, a version adapted to a twisted and distorted world. It is something like, I suppose, the way in which the pine that grows at timberline, wind blasted and twisted against the rock, is a version of the tall and symmetrical tree that grows lower on the slopes.

I think it may be that the related notions of sacrifice and gift represent (or come close to representing) the fact, that is, the pattern of life, whose distorted version we know here as morality. Imagine a situation, an “economy” if you will, in which no one ever buys or trades for or seizes any good thing. But whatever good he enjoys it is either one which he himself has created or else one which he received as a free and unconditional gift. And as soon as he has tasted it and seen that it is good he stands ready to give it away in his turn as soon as the opportunity arises. In such a place, if one were to speak either of his rights or his duties, his remarks might be met with puzzled laughter as his hearers struggled to recall an ancient world in which these terms referred to something important.

This is, I believe, what heaven will be like. Rights and duties will be alien concepts that will simply disappear with our earthly life. We will simply do the good because it comes to us naturally. We will want to share whatever good we receive with everyone around us. I don’t know about you, but that sounds absolutely wonderful to me.

Are Knowing Facts about God Enough?

Bill Pratt — Mon, 27 May 2013 13:00:27 +0000

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Since I write an apologetics blog where we frequently discuss theology, doctrine, philosophy, science, and reasoning, it may seem like my view is that all a person needs is the facts about God, and that is all. Let me straighten this misconception out: I believe facts are not enough.

God, as a personal being, as THE personal being, is not satisfied with someone who knows a bunch of facts about him. That’s nice, but more is needed. If your spouse knew several important facts about you, but didn’t love you, would you be satisfied with that relationship?

David Baggett and Jerry Walls describe Paul Moser’s insightful views on this subject:

God both reveals and hides himself, and Moser argues, consistent with Christian theology, that the reason for this is that God’s purposes aren’t just to generate propositional knowledge of his existence, but a more deeply personal sort of knowledge. God is a loving Father who, in his filial love, speaks to us all but in different ways and at different times, in an effort to invite us into a loving personal relationship with himself.

Moser argues that a relational God of love is not content merely to provide discursive evidence of his existence in order to elicit cognitive assent or function as the conclusion of an argument; rather, God desires to be known for nothing less than this robust end: fellowship and morally perfect love between him and human beings.

So what are the implications for a person who believes that mere facts or evidence should suffice in their search for God?

Moser . . . suggests that evidence for God cannot be mere spectator evidence, but something both more authoritative and volitional than that. God, on Moser’s view, hides from those who do not desire a relationship or life-changing knowledge of him. God conceals himself from those who do not recognize the existential implications of belief in God, whereas he does reveal himself to those who recognize and desire to live with the implications of knowing God.

Baggett and Walls add:

A theistic conception of reality fundamentally alters everything. For if God is the ultimate reality, our quest for wisdom is a quest for him, a personal being, not just principles or platitudes. And if the context in which we find ourselves involves God drawing us into loving relationship with him, then a logic of relations more than a logic of propositions reigns.

As C. S. Lewis put it, “If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that His operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give Him our confidence in spite of this.”

Your search for God must not only include facts about him, but a relationship. At the very least, while you’re collecting facts about God, you must be genuinely open to having a relationship with him. God will reveal himself to you if that is your approach. If not, he may stay hidden.

Tough Questions Answered

How Can Two Witnesses See the Same Event Differently? Part 1

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Online Conference July 6-7: Is Christianity Actually True? Why?

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Do Discrepancies in Eyewitness Testimony Render All of It Unreliable?

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Why Is Morality Ultimately Relational?

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What Explains the Existence of Objective Evil?

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What Explains the Laws of Logic and Mathematics?

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What Explains My Enduring Self?

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What Explains the Existence of the Physical Universe?

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Will Morality Always Be Expressed as Rights and Duties?

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Are Knowing Facts about God Enough?

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