An Atheist's Self-Deception

I can see that the combination of work, calculus, and an attempt at having some sort of a life is going to make it difficult for me to contribute to this blog all that often, but after Jeff Downs put up the link to a Greg Bahnsen article on Tom Wanchick's The Good Fight, I just had to say something.

Calculus can wait a few minutes while I riff on some of the stupider things in the article.

[The Apostle] Paul asserts that all men know God so inescapably and clearly from natural revelation that they are left with no defense for their unfaithful response to the truth about Him.

Well, then, if Paul said it, it must surely be true! After all, it's in the Bible! This argument is so bald-faced in its arrogance (what the hell does Paul--or anyone else, for that matter--know about my beliefs and mental states?) and stupidity (it assumes, after all, what it is trying to prove) that it makes me want to... well... beat up a Christian fighter!

Christianity can be shown to be, not 'just as good as' or even 'better than' the non-Christian position, but the only position that does not make nonsense of human experience.... Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself. [my emphasis]

The first question that comes to mind, here, is: Which "Christianity"? The second one is this: If the whole of logic and epistemology is dependent on the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose from the grave 3 days later, then wouldn't it be possible--in fact inevitable--that people engaged in philosophical or scientific inquiry would be able to derive Jesus's sacrifice entirely independent of exposure to the Bible? Has such a thing ever happened in the history of science or philosophy? And how, then, does one account for the inconsistencies between the 4 gospels?

The article goes on for a considerable stretch after that. It would be tiresome to attack the rest of it, since its foundation is entirely baseless, anyway. Calculus awaits.