The Christian Vanguard

There is good reason to believe that Judas is in hell. Our Lord says of him that it would have been better for him to have never been born. If Judas was finally saved, it would make no sense to say that it was better for Judas to have never been born. So Judas was not finally saved.  A common pious sounding counter argument goes like this. Since the Church does not definitively declare who is in hell, we cannot know whether Judas is in hell or not. There are a few problems with this response. First, it seems as though Our Lord does declare it, so even if the Church has not declared it, a credible witness, God Himself, has, and that is sufficient reason.  Second, there is a more serious problem with the argument, namely, the argument is self refuting. The argument rests on an assumption that if the Church has not declared some article of faith, then we cannot know it. But that statement is itself an article of faith. So the question should be asked, when did the Church declare ...

The following is an essay I turned in for my British Empiricism class. It is on Hume's Problem of Induction.  Deductive and inductive reasoning are types of argument structures. In a deductive argument, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. For example, if 1) All cats are mammals 2) Felix is a cat, then it would follow inescapably that 3) Felix is a mammal. If 1 and 2 are true, there is no possible or conceivable world in which 3 is not true. Inductive arguments do not provide this guarantee. A good inductive argument only makes the conclusion more probable or likely than not. For example, if 1) 90% of people can swim, and 2) Michael is a person, then 3) Michael can swim, though not guaranteed, is likely. It does not follow with logical necessity because Michael may just happen to be part of that 10% of the population that does not swim.  David Hume’s problem of induction states that inductive justifications that rely on past experiences wi...

James’ response to Clifford suggests that we cannot, just by willing it, come to believe something. Thus it is a mistake to think belief is something largely within our control. We don’t believe something because we have logically come to this or that conclusion, but largely because of our volition, which is to say, our non-intellectual nature influences our convictions. So when we are confronted with and have to decide between two propositions that cannot be decided by the intellect, our passions must decide. Even not deciding, as Clifford may have us do, is a choice of the passions.  There are two epistemic goals which are to avoid error and to believe truth. These are distinct. Just because we disbelieve B, it doesn’t follow that we believe A, for we may instead fall into other kinds of falsehoods. Clifford emphasized avoiding error over and above knowing truth, but a good epistemology will have both.

Clifford asks us to consider a ship owner with a bad boat that needs repairs. This thought that it needs repairs makes the ship owner uncomfortable and so he eventually pushes those beliefs aside and then genuinely believes his ship will be just fine for another voyage. Alas, his ship sinks. Clifford believes that the owner is to be held responsible for the death of voyagers because he had evidence to believe otherwise, and his sincerity should be of no help or defense to him. On the other hand, if the ship does not sink and is safe, this still would not excuse the owner because when an action is done, it is right or it is wrong and no accidental feature of the fruits will alter that. So for Clifford, it is wrong to believe things on insufficient evidence.  Clifford states that no belief is truly insignificant because all beliefs prepare us to receive other beliefs, they make us disposed to confirming our beliefs and indisposed to disconfirming them, and it lays the groundwork...

Lewis and Nemirow say that Mary does not learn anything upon her release because there are different senses of knowledge at play. What she does gain is a certain representational or imaginative ability, or a knowledge of how rather than a knowledge that, which can be granted without having to deny that her earlier factual knowledge was incomplete. She may not be able to remember what it red is like, but that is an ability not a fact. Jackson responds by supposing that Mary had a lecture on skepticism, and that upon her release in which she can now take in color, she worries if her experience of the colors is the same kind that others have had. This worry is not about her abilities but whether her knowledge of others was truly complete. So the sense of knowledge, which shows to be problematic, stays the same and relevant.

There are some that say in order to have knowledge, you must have certainty. This is false. Knowledge, classically defined, is three things: True Justified Belief.

Richard Dawkins is an amusing character. Dawkins believes you cannot justifiably call a child “Christian” and to do so is child abuse. Some things follow from this, like having these children removed from their parents. You wouldn’t allow a child to remain in an abusive house, right? It’s kind of funny though because some atheists will say all babies are atheists and so there is a presumption of atheism. I don’t know if Dawkins takes this route, but I doubt it because the reason he believes one cannot be a Christian child must also apply to atheist children. Anywho, having been Catholic, I have a different approach to this now. 

The Trinity. If that last sentence made you feel weary or made yourself prepared to be confused, yeah, you’re not alone. I know a lot of Christians who feel that way. I used to be there. I get it the feeling. What I don’t get is when one’s inability to comprehend the Trinity is used as an objection against it. A distinction needs to be made between something not making sense, and something being incoherent. You can say reject something on the basis of it being incoherent, but you can’t reject it on the basis of you not being able to understand it. All things that are incoherent don’t make sense, but not all things that don’t make sense are incoherent.

In my conversations on the existence of God with atheists and skeptics, I've heard this one more than once,  "You can't prove a negative"  and they therefore think they have nothing to prove, no work to do. Easy peasy, right?. I remember watching a debate on the existence of God, and during the Q&A, some poor undergrad started off by saying, "I just wanna start off by saying that you can't prove a negative. My question for Dr. Craig is..."