Specious Pleading

Over Egging the Pudding

Zen Tiger, over at NZ Conservative, posted on the latest billboard put up by try-hard atheistic folk in the UK.



This is one of the most egregious examples of question begging floating around fashionable, Chardonnay-sipping circles of Unbelief. It represents either a terrible wilful ignorance or an intellectual laziness. The propaganda point of the billboard is that children deserve to the raised in homes where human autonomy and pseudo-rational thinking are the only tolerated views, which is to say that children should be conditioned to be rationalists. Since those propagating this ideology are themselves staunch believers in human autonomy and pseudo-rationalism, it's all a bit rich.

The Christian philosopher and apologist, Cornelius Van Til once wrote a pamphlet, entitled Why I Believe in God. It consists of a conversation between Van Til and a thoroughly modern Unbeliever. In it, Van Til contrasts his Christian upbringing with that of his Unbelieving friend. He describes his own upbringing thus:

Ours was not in any sense a pietistic family. There were not any great emotional outbursts on any occasion that I recall. There was much ado about making hay in the summer and about caring for the cows and sheep in the winter, but round about it all there was a deep conditioning atmosphere. Though there were no tropical showers of revivals, the relative humidity was always very high. At every meal the whole family was present. There was a closing as well as an opening prayer, and a chapter of the Bible was read each time. The Bible was read through from Genesis to Revelation. At breakfast or at dinner, as the case might be, we would hear of the New Testament, or of "the children of Gad after their families, of Zephon and Haggi and Shuni and Ozni, of Eri and Areli." I do not claim that I always fully understood the meaning of it all. Yet of the total effect there can be no doubt. The Bible became for me, in all its parts, in every syllable, the very Word of God. I learned that I must believe the Scripture story, and that "faith" was a gift of God. What had happened in the past, and particularly what had happened in the past in Palestine, was of the greatest moment to me. In short, I was brought up in what Dr. Joad would call "topographical and temporal parochialism." I was "conditioned" in the most thorough fashion. I could not help believing in God -- in the God of Christianity -- in the God of the whole Bible!

Now it is this sort of thing which the Billboarders above get so upset about. They view this as a form of child-abuse. But, Van Til goes on to describe the conditioning of his Unbelieving interlocutor:

Living next to the Library of Congress, you were not so restricted. Your parents were very much enlightened in their religious views. They read to you from some Bible of the World instead of from the Bible of Palestine. No, indeed, you correct me, they did no such thing. They did not want to trouble you about religious matters in your early days. They sought to cultivate the "open mind" in their children.

Shall we say then that in my early life I was conditioned to believe in God, while you were left free to develop your own judgment as you pleased? But that will hardly do. You know as well as I that every child is conditioned by its environment. You were as thoroughly conditioned not to believe in God as I was to believe in God. So let us not call each other names. If you want to say that belief was poured down my throat, I shall retort by saying that unbelief was poured down your throat. That will get us set for our argument.

Van Til then goes on to describe his conditioning in a Christian school, but then completes the comparison/contrast with the way his unbelieving friend was schooled:

How different your early schooling was! You went to a "neutral" school. As your parents had done at home, so your teachers now did at school. They taught you to be "open-minded." God was not brought into connection with your study of nature or history. You were trained without bias all along the line.

Of course, you know better now. You realize that all that was purely imaginary. To be "without bias" is only to have a particular kind of bias. The idea of "neutrality" is simply a colorless suit that covers a negative attitude toward God. At least it ought to be plain that he who is not for the God of Christianity is against Him.

What the Billboard atheists are arguing for is the need to condition and propagandise all children into Unbelief from the outset. Their suppressed "deep-magic" assumption is that the God of the Scriptures cannot possibly exist because man is the ultimate determiner of truth. He decides these things for himself, which is to say that the God of Christianity is excluded from the get-go.

Now, we would have respect for any Unbeliever who candidly acknowledged this reality. What we cannot respect is the self-serving question begging of the Billboard atheists calling for all children to be given the right to choose. Either they do not see the logs in their eye--in which case they are to be pitied--or they do, yet dissemble and mislead--in which case they need to be called out. For your own sake, we want to say, get off your conditioned railway track "talking points" and slogans, open your closed minds, and think a bit harder and more rigorously.