Universal Acid

Explanations Come to an End--Somewhere

One commentator animadverting upon the post entitled The Unintended Consequences of Homosexual "Marriage" had this to say, after quoting from the post:

"The endgame is that only Christians and the Christian faith have certain and solid foundations for knowing anything. Only Christian epistemology is rational and coherent and true. Everything else is sinking sand."

Thats (sic) a conceit of enormous proportions John. Besides, putting the words "rational" and "coherent" any where (sic) near the bible or the word "faith" is oxymoronic.

Our trusty commentator, xchequer is naturally talking up his own book here.   He alleges that the "Bible" and "faith" represent a contradiction in terms with "rational" and "coherent".  Alleges, mind you.  Not argues.  Nevertheless what he says is a helpful illustration of the all-to-common mindset of Unbelief: shout loudly, slur your opponents, and never go near a rational argument. 

We, for our part, have alleged that all non-Christian epistemologies are sinking sand; only Christian epistemology is rational, coherent, and true.  It's a strong claim.  Nevertheless, it's one we are prepared to argue for.  Rationally.


Below is a brief folksy illustration of the point, addressing the most common epistemology operating in the world of Unbelief today: evidentialism.

Now, for just about every belief each of us holds, someone can ask us why we believe it and expect to receive an argument--a reason--of some sort  But how can we have a reason or argument for every one of our beliefs?  For every reason we give, that reason will require a reason, which will in turn require yet another reason, and so on, world without end. But of course, we can't have an infinite number of reasons.  None of us has that much time on our hands.  Or enough patience. 

All of us have experienced the maddening series of "why" questions launched at us from the mouths of small children.  These "why" questions, you are quite sure, absolutely must stop.  When the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "Explanations come to an end somewhere," he had just visited his niece and nephew. 

Let's look at the problem differently.  Start with any belief of yours.  If evidentialism is true, you should, if you're rational, be able to give some reason for believing it.  In other words, you'll have evidence for it, other beliefs supporting the original belief. 

These supporting beliefs will also, presumably, have beliefs "beneath" them, giving them adequate support. In this way, all our beliefs form a sort of structure or building, with each belief akin to a brick, each brick having at least one brick beneath it (usually more), evidentially supporting it.  But, just like any building, we need a foundation, bricks on which our entire edifice rests. 

If evidentialism is true, however, and all beliefs require evidence, then so must your foundational beliefs.  But this can't be right, can it?  Foundational beliefs have no supporting evidence--they're the foundation. . . . If the beliefs we all stop at, our foundational beliefs, require evidence in order to be rational, then the beliefs that make up the foundation aren't rational; they don't have the requisite evidential support. (Emphasis, ours.) . . . .   So if evidentialism is true, we have a serious problem--namely, all our beliefs are irrational.  [Mitch Stokes, A Shot of Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), p. 13f.]

Evidentialism, the most common epistemology of our day, is sinking sand.  It is epistemology's version of universal acid: it eats everything away, including itself.  It ends in irrationalism.  Now if evidentialism accurately represents the way the world actually functions, then it follows that the cosmos itself is irrational, random,  stochastic. Which is to say that this sentence has no meaning whatsoever--and if it does have meaning at all, then evidentialism cannot be true.